North Korean missile ultimatums
fall short By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - United States President Barack
Obama's oratorical flights against North Korea's
plan to fire a long-range rocket next month may
have pleased his South Korean hosts, but evoked
little more than polite responses from the Chinese
and Russians who exercise the most influence in
Pyongyang.
The failure of Team America so
far to get anywhere in dissuading North Korea from
popping off the rocket-cum-satellite was
particularly galling after all the one-on-one
meetings between Obama and many of the more than
50 heads of state at this week's portentously
named "nuclear security summit" in Seoul.
The final insult was North Korea's quick
and firm rejection, in the final hours of the
summit, of Obama's plea to drop the shot.
A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman, in a lengthy
defense of North
Korea's determination to
go through with the launch, stressed the goal was
to put a satellite into orbit. North Korea "will
not give up the satellite launch for peaceful
purposes", the spokesman was quoted as saying.
This was "a legitimate right of a sovereign state"
and was "essential for economic development".
The emphasis on economic development
appeared a rebuff not only of Obama but also of
China's President Hu Jintao and Russia's outgoing
President Dmitry Medvedev.
Both of them,
in talks with Obama on the sidelines of the
two-day summit, agreed it would indeed be good if
the North would cancel the plan for the missile
test and honor the "moratorium" that the US
believed was achieved in talks between US and
North Korean envoys on February 29. Clearly, they
did not have a rocket launch in mind when they
urged the North to focus instead on development.
Chinese and Russian expressions of
"concern" even a reported denunciation from
Medvedev of the North Korean plan, fell short of a
commitment to do much about it. "China is
certainly talking politely," said Han Sung-joo, a
former foreign minister and ambassador to
Washington, "but I don't think China will actually
do that" - that is, risk upsetting the North
Koreans by withholding some of the fuel and with
which it keeps its North Korean protectorate
alive.
"China and Russia will put some
modest pressure [on the North]," said Paik
Han-soon, director of the Center for North Korean
Studies at the Sejong Institute, a leading
think-tank in Seoul. "But they will not be taking
concrete steps." They know very well, he said,
that "North Korea will go its own way" regardless
of what anyone says.
Instead, Han forecast
"China will try to persuade South Korea to make it
to six-party talks" on North Korea's nuclear
program. The talks, hosted by China, including the
US, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas, were last
held in Beijing in December 2008 - and are still
regarded as essential in bringing about
rapprochement on the Korean Peninsula.
The
worst irony is the abiding sense that North Korea
can actually get away with firing the rocket,
despite all protests, on the calculated gamble
that the US's rhetoric will fail to gain
significant traction in the run-up to the US
presidential election in November and South
Korea's election in November.
"North Korea
has given a kind of dilemma to both the US and
South Korea in that they will go ahead with the
rocket launch," Han surmised.
If the US
"breaks off the February 29 agreement" and cancels
its commitment to provide 240,000 tons of
emergency food aid, he said, the Americans "reduce
the opportunity" for inspectors from the
International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the
North Korean nuclear complex at Yongbyon as also
agreed.
"North Korea can then put all the
blame on the US," Han reasoned, "and the US will
have to find a way to punish North Korea". That,
he said, "is difficult" in view of the Chinese and
Russian positions.
By the time the whole
show wound down, the summiteers could agree on a
declaration against all forms of nuclear terrorism
that said not a word about the issues that are
dominating the entire gathering, the nuclear
programs of North Korea and Iran.
In fact,
the stated purpose of the summit was to come up
with ways to combat nuclear terrorism - especially
the danger of highly enriched uranium falling into
the hands of terrorists - but avoid censuring
individual countries or programs. A long-winded
final communique reaffirming "our shared goals of
nuclear disarmament, nuclear nonproliferation and
peaceful uses of nuclear energy" made plain that
compliance was voluntary.
Perhaps the most
substantive accomplishment was an understanding on
coordination on reducing the amount of highly
enriched uranium used for medical purposes. "We
are working very aggressively," said US Energy
Secretary Steven Chu, "so terrorists who might
have access to this material cannot have access."
For all the talk, the sense persists that
North Korea will return to a talking mode and get
the US to make good on the bargain after
celebrations marking the centennial on April 15 of
the birth of founding leader Kim Il-sung,
grandfather of the young new leader, Kim Jong-eun.
North Korea has said it will fire the rocket at
around that time.
"North Korea is not
interested in what was discussed and achieved
here," said Paik. "They cannot expect anything
good to come out of this summit."
Obama,
however, glossed over the potential pitfalls as he
talked to students and faculty members at Hankook
University of Foreign Studies before getting down
to serious diplomacy.
In a special touch
of drama, he remarked, "Here in Korea, I want to
speak directly to the leadership in Pyongyang."
The US, he said, "has no hostile intent toward
your country", is "committed to peace" and
"prepared to take steps to improve relations" -
the reason, he said, "we have offered nutritional
aid to North Korean mothers and children".
Dangling food aid like a bait, he advised
the North Koreans, "Know this - there will be no
more rewards for provocations." In other words,
you can forget the food if you fire that rocket.
For all the talk, the sense persists that
North Korea, after the hullabaloo over the rocket
has died down, will return to a talking mode and
get the US to make good on the bargain.
"Washington needs to manage the situation so they
don't completely destroy the formal talks," said
Choi Jin-wook, a senior researcher who specializes
on North Korea at the Korea Institute of National
Unification. "They will still need to get North
Korea involved in that dialogue."
Nor was
North Korea the only more or less intractable
problem on the agenda - that is, the agenda of
talks-on-the-sidelines, not the formal nuclear
security summit.
Obama was also anxious to
get across the urgency of persuading Iran to cease
and desist from developing its own nuclear
warheads - if indeed it is. "There is time to
solve this diplomatically, but time is short," he
said. "Iran's leaders must understand that there
is no escaping the choice before it."
The
topic of Iran, he promised, would also come up in
his talks with Chinese and Russian leaders, but
here too he was not believed to have elicited more
than polite responses, possibly qualified
agreement but no real commitments.
Obama's
talks with Medvedev were particularly dicey since
Vladimir Putin, emerging from a hiatus as prime
minister, will take over again as president on May
9.
He promised at Hankook University to
discuss the whole issue of "reducing not only
strategic nuclear warheads but also tactical
weapons and warheads" when he meets "president
Putin" in May. Sensitive to Putin's objections to
North Atlantic Treaty Organization missiles
pointed toward Russia, he said missile defense
"should be an area of cooperation, not tension".
That sentiment, however, led to the
biggest flub of the summit - remarks that Obama
made to Medvedev when he thought the microphones
were turned off. He would, he said, have "more
flexibility" on missile defense after the
presidential election in November.
"This
is my last election," he reminded Medvedev,
meaning he would then be free to wheel and deal.
The line, "my last election" was perfect for a
host of enemies campaigning to make sure the
election will be just that - the last chance he'll
get on the American political stage.
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