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2 SPEAKING
FREELY 'Action for action' on defusing N
Korea's nukes By Kim Myong Chol
(Kim is often called an "unofficial"
spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
When the Banco Delta
Asia (BDA) fund issue was virtually
settled, Kim Jong-il, supreme
leader of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK), launched a highly choreographed
high-profile campaign for two major purposes.
One is to put to rest the myth that the
February 13 agreement at the six-party talks in
Beijing is an "oil for reactor" package deal and
to reinstate its true picture as a 100% political
deal involving Washington ending its animosity
toward Pyongyang. The other is to put out the word
that Kim's administration remains committed to a
relentless and faithful pursuit of the principle
of word for word and action for action in moving
to fulfill Phase 2 of the February 13 agreement,
requiring the United States to take specific
action in parallel.
The message from Kim
Jong-il is unmistakably clear: moving beyond the
temporary shutdown of the nuclear facilities is
contingent on the administration of US President
George W Bush making a strategic decision to take
reciprocal steps it pledged under the February 13
agreement. Otherwise, the Americans will still
stop short of seeing a full extent of North
Korea's nuclear program and permanent disabling of
the five nuclear facilities, which will be brought
back to life from temporary closure at short
notice.
The mandatory US steps include
bilateral talks aimed at resolving bilateral
issues, moving toward transformation of US
relations with North Korea into friendly ones,
removing the designation of North Korea as a state
sponsor of terrorism, terminating the application
of the Trading with the Enemy Act to North Korea,
and having Japan normalize relations with North
Korea.
A prime example of US hostility
toward North Korea is the US-initiated
cancellation of the program to supply the country
with two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors.
Their operation requires access to civilian
nuclear technology and nuclear fuel to be supplied
under additional agreements with the US on nuclear
energy, subject to the US ending its hostile
stance in favor of a peaceful co-existence.
Fulfilling these obligations should be a
joke and cost the Bush administration little
political and economic capital as compared with
astronomical costs of the Iraq war. The Bush
administration, already a lame duck and miserably
humbled by the poorly armed Iraqi insurgents
lacking any air force and heavy arms, must make a
vital choice between the two options before it is
too late: one is only to settle for temporary
closure of the North Korean nuclear sites and the
other is to record a dramatic legacy achievement
that will likely more than offset the Iraq mess.
Bush might as well learn from the playbook of the
late president Richard Nixon, who wrote history by
having his landmark visit to Beijing steal the
spotlight from the US defeat in Vietnam.
An opening salvo was simultaneously fired
in Pyongyang and Kuala Lumpur early last month
when An Song-nam, executive director of North
Korea's Institute of Disarmament and Peace, a
think-tank for the DPRK Foreign Ministry,
addressed the annual Asia-Pacific Roundtable
there. Citing the last instruction of the late
president Kim Il-sung to transform the Korean
Peninsula into a nuclear-weapons-free zone, An
reiterated the commitment of the Kim Jong-il
administration to forgo a nuclear arsenal once
sufficient mutual trust and confidence are
fostered between Pyongyang and Washington after
normalized relations and a peace treaty between
the two enemies. While stressing the governing
principle of "action for action", he presented a
list of US must-dos if the Korean Peninsula is to
be denuclearized, including an end to the policy
of hostility to Pyongyang, cessation of military
games in and around Korea, lifting sanctions, and
replacement of the precarious Korean War ceasefire
accord with a peace treaty.
Follow-on
salvos came one after another. The long-delayed
resolution of the BDA issue over the unwarranted
US freeze of US$25 million of North Korean funds
prompted its Foreign Ministry spokesman to define
it as in accordance with the principle of "action
for action" and reiterate its commitment to the
principle of moving to Phase 2 of the February 13
Agreement.
A third salvo was fired in
Britain on July 2-3 when North Korea's former
deputy ambassador to the United Nations in New
York, Han Song-ryol, spoke before an audience of
scholars, diplomats and journalists at Cambridge
University. He stressed that if the Korean
Peninsula is to be denuclearized, it is crucial
for the US to end its hostility toward North
Korea, remove it from the list of states that
allegedly sponsor terrorism, withdraw its troops
from South Korea, eliminate the nuclear threat
from Korea and its neighboring area including
Japan, and create a peaceful environment for
cooperation and development.
The powerful
Korean People's Army (KPA) joined the blitzkrieg
public-relations campaign on July 13, two days
before the International Atomic Energy Agency
verified the shutdown of the operating
graphite-moderated reactor in North Korea that
churned out weapons-grade fuel like hotcakes. Its
representative in Panmunjom proposed direct talks
with the US-led UN forces, to be held at any time
at a mutually acceptable venue in the presence of
a UN representative. Offering to discuss matters -
a peace treaty - related to peace and security on
the peninsula, the KPA warned that with a
precarious ceasefire accord representing a serious
threat to peace and security, additional pressure
on North Korea, massive arms buildup and major war
games carry every risk of torpedoing the February
agreement and the six-party talks and driving its
legitimate effort to upgrade the relevant
deterrence against preemptive strikes from the US.
The following day, July 14, another key
demand came from Pyongyang that the US prove in a
verifiable manner for all to understand that its
forces do not keep any nuclear weapons in South
Korea and have no intention to attack the North,
as spelled out in the September 19, 2005,
six-party statement. This move by the Korean
National Peace Committee is indicative of a future
North Korean demand to be met before
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,
including South Korea, is complete.
On
July 15, when the sole working nuclear reactor in
North Korea was shut down, stopping the production
of plutonium, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry
in Pyongyang served a clear-cut reminder on the
US, Japan and the other parties concerned that
"the full implementation of the February 13
agreement depends on how the other five
participating countries of the six-party talks
honor their commitments on the principle of
'action for action' and on what practical measures
the US and Japan, in particular, will take to roll
back their hostile policies toward the DPRK".
The next day in New York, Kim Myong-gil,
minister at North Korea's United Nations mission,
joined the chorus. He told the Associated Press
(AP) that the Bush administration must take
actions in parallel before his government moves to
disclose the full extent of its nuclear program
and disable the reactor.
Responding to
North Korea's coordinated campaign, the Chinese
news agency this month distributed a commentary
that reads in part:
All parties concerned have agreed to
implement the September 2005 Joint Statement in
a phased manner in line with the principle of
"action for action", says the February 13
agreement.
They agreed to take actions
simultaneously in the initial phase, including
the eventual abandonment of the DPRK's Yongbyon
nuclear facilities, provision of economic,
energy and humanitarian assistance to the DPRK,
and the establishment of a peace and stability
mechanism on the Korean Peninsula.
As
main negotiators, the DPRK and the United States
should start bilateral talks aimed at resolving
pending bilateral issues and moving toward full
diplomatic relations.
The US will start
removing the designation of the DPRK as a state
sponsor of terrorism and terminating the Trading
with the Enemy Act concerning DPRK, says the
agreement.
The DPRK and Japan will start
bilateral talks aiming to normalize their
relations in line with the Pyongyang
Declaration, based on settling "unfortunate
past" and "issues of concern", the document
says.
Before flying into Beijing from
Pyongyang on July 17, the chief North Korean
nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, told AP: "There
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