WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush
hosts South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun at the
White House on Thursday in a summit that's likely
to be the most difficult and potentially most
tendentious meeting ever held between the leaders
of the two countries.
The two presidents
are so far apart on the most basic issues that no
amount of diplomatic double-talk appears likely to
paper over the chasm. So deep are the differences
that South Korean officials are saying the two
sides have agreed that no joint
communique will emerge from
the meeting.
Somehow their aides and
advisers may devise a waffling statement to which
both of them can subscribe, but both sides agree
it would be a miracle if they came to real terms
on how to deal with North Korea or on breaking
down trade barriers that are holding up talks on a
free-trade agreement (FTA).
It's hard to
say which of these two areas of discussion is more
controversial. The topic of North Korea grabs the
headlines while that country's leader, Kim
Jong-il, wields the threat of an underground
nuclear test that would proclaim it a full-fledged
nuclear power, but US efforts to penetrate South
Korea's largely closed agricultural markets arouse
much greater concern to well-organized South
Korean farmers.
The US and South Korea,
moreover, are at odds on the basic future of their
alliance. The United States has persuaded South
Korea to go along with a grand design for scaling
down the number of US troops while building a huge
new base 80 kilometers south of Seoul. The base
would accommodate the US military headquarters,
now in the center of the capital, as well as the
last US combat troops.
The plan confronts
South Koreans with the question of whether their
country is really prepared to face the North
militarily. Southern officials blame what they see
as the hardline policy of the United States for
the failure to persuade the North to return to
six-party talks on its nuclear weapons. This
policy, they believe, is responsible for raising
the risk of a second Korean War.
The
solution, in the official South Korean view, would
be for the US to talk directly with North Korea
rather than insist that it return to six-party
talks as a prerequisite for any form of dialogue.
South Korea's unification minister, Lee
Jeong-seok, advanced this view in a 50-minute
meeting on Monday with Christopher Hill, the US
assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the
Pacific, when Hill touched down in Seoul on the
final leg of a trip in which he also stopped off
in Tokyo and Beijing.
Lee's call for "no
restrictions on the form of dialogue" reflects the
overriding desire of President Roh to pursue
reconciliation with Pyongyang regardless of the
threat posed by North Korean nuclear warheads or
missiles that may some day be capable of carrying
them to targets as far as the US west coast.
Roh is sure to try to press the case for
reconciliation in Thursday's summit, while Bush
holds fast to the need for resuming six-party
talks. The question is how the two will manage to
appear to uphold the US-Korean alliance while Roh
calls for what Bush sees as a dangerous form of
appeasement.
Roh may also try to convince
Bush on what he sees as the folly of the US drive
for stiffening economic measures against North
Korea if it continues to refuse to return to
six-party talks. Hill raised this possibility at
every stop on his trip, calling for "vigilance" in
enforcing the United Nations Security Council
resolution, adopted after North Korea test-fired
seven missiles in early July, banning any dealings
with the country that might provide technology or
funding for missiles or weapons of mass
destruction.
Presumably the advisers to
both Roh and Bush are so highly attuned to the
differences between them that they have scripted a
summit in which the two presidents manage to talk
politely. Otherwise, the summit could break down
in open disagreement, further jeopardizing an
alliance that already is clearly frayed.
Somehow the two presidents must also find
the words to promote a free-trade agreement that
both governments profess to favor. Negotiations
with Seoul on an FTA appear to US officials as
just about as difficult as efforts at bringing
Pyongyang back to six-party talks.
While
Hill was getting nowhere in his talks with South
Korean officials, Wendy Cutler, assistant US
special trade representative, leading the US side
in the FTA negotiations, concluded what she said
was a "disappointing" third round of talks with
the South Koreans in Seattle. Basically, the
Koreans refused to agree to open up agricultural
markets, knowing full well that significant
concessions would provoke a renewal of violent
protests by rice farmers fearful of losing their
livelihoods to US competition.
There's no
way Roh and Bush can avoid this issue. They may,
however, gloss over it, talking up the benefits of
free trade while ignoring the controversy. They
may also come up with an implicit tradeoff - US
concessions to South Korea in return for a show of
South Korean support for the alliance.
US
and South Korean scriptwriters may also hope to
find common ground even on the topic of North
Korea. The formula would be a new version of
multilateralism. Hill, in Seoul, suggested that
approach in a call for a multilateral forum - a
"mechanism", as he called it in an exercise in
voodoo diplomacy - that might function without
North Korea. Roh, at the meeting of Asian and
European leaders in Helsinki, called for a
multilateral security framework in Northeast Asia.
Diplomatic wordsmiths may manage to merge these
pleas into a formulation reflecting both concepts.
Roh and Bush may also find common ground
on the topic of North Korean nukes, deploring the
development of North Korean nuclear warheads and
calling on Pyongyang not to upset everyone by an
underground test.
A vaguely worded
statement on that topic could get around the whole
question of how to respond to a test. Bush may
well see a test as a reason not just to strengthen
economic sanctions but to build up defenses in the
region, notably in Japan. Roh has already
suggested he does not believe a test would be all
that important - certainly no reason for giving up
the quest for North-South reconciliation.
Roh may, however, be up for a clarion call
against escalation of tensions as seen in North
Korea's nuclear weapons program. Such a statement
would mollify the US while also appeasing another
constituency of which he is acutely aware, his own
conservative opposition, angling to take over in
South Korea's next presidential election at the
end of next year.
For Bush and Roh, the
challenge is to give an appearance of continuity
and a common approach. Ideally, the final script
for the summit will be a bland concoction of
diplo-speak. But will they be able to stick to the
script? The great challenge is for both sides to
avoid any sign of acrimony while neither backs
down from previously known views.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been
covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces
in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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