A Korean crisis

Published : Jan 31, 2003 00:00 IST

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. - SERGEI CHIRIKOV/AFP/EPA

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. - SERGEI CHIRIKOV/AFP/EPA

The Bush administration spoils for a showdown with North Korea despite the latter's efforts to be conciliatory, pulling East Asia to the brink of war and an arms race.

THE recent decision of North Korea to reactivate its plutonium reactor at Yongbyon and simultaneously expel the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors is being interpreted as a powerful signal to the world community that the country would not be cowed down by the threats from Washington. Pyongyang has also threatened to walk out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Pyongyang had told the United States administration last year that it had embarked on a separate uranium enrichment programme. In early 2002, the George Bush administration included North Korea in the "axis of evil" and threatened to wage a "preventive war" against states that were developing weapons of mass destruction. President George Bush said that his government would not put faith "in the word of tyrants who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties".

Only a three-month notice period is needed for a country to quit the NPT formally. North Korea will be legally free from the NPT yoke thereafter and can theoretically go in for nuclear weapon production. North Korea's decision came after the U.S. announced that it was suspending the annual supply of 5,00,000 tonnes of heavy oil to the former, which was part of a 1994 agreement between Pyongyang and Washington. The 5 megawatt (MW) Yongbyon reactor was also shut down under the terms of that agreement. With the U.S. suspending its oil shipments, North Korea no longer had any compulsion to abide by the 1994 agreement. The 50 MW and 200 MW nuclear reactors at Yongbyon were being built to generate electricity for the power-starved country. Under the 1994 accord, the U.S. along with South Korea and Japan had promised to complete two new nuclear power plants for North Korea. The deadline for the completion of the first plant was 2003 but it is many years behind schedule.

Washington has been claiming that the Yongbyon plant would be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. The facility is said to have 8,000 spent fuel rods stored in a cooling pond. According to the Western intelligence community, these rods have enough plutonium to make five or six bombs. Pyongyang has hinted that it might unload the spent fuel rods. It has already intimated the IAEA that it is preparing to reopen the radiochemical laboratory where spent fuel rods can be reprocessed to extract plutonium. The last time Pyongyang threatened to take such a step was in May 1994. President Bill Clinton responded by making contingency plans to bomb Yongbyon.

The brief takeover of a North Korean ship by the Spanish Navy, under U.S. orders, in December 2002 had further infuriated North Korea. The ship was carrying Scud missiles ordered by Yemen, which today is a close ally of the U.S., in the "war against terrorism". The business transaction with Yemen was perfectly in order and was not in contravention of international laws. The economically hard-pressed North Korea makes most of its hard currency earnings through the sale of missiles to developing countries. Pyongyang officially denounced the seizure of the ship, describing it as part of the U.S.-tailored containment strategy against the country. A statement issued by North Korea in early January said that the U.S. strategy "means total economic sanctions aimed at isolating and stifling the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)".

NORTH KOREA, like many other countries in the world, is also worried about the U.S.' new strategic doctrine, which allows pre-emptive strikes against countries viewed as its enemies. Pyongyang has said that Washington's demand that it dismantle its nuclear programme is aimed at "disarming" the country, before launching a military attack against it. The North Koreans have not forgotten that the U.S. was on the brink of using nuclear weapons against their country during the Korean war of the early 1950s.

The Bush administration initially tried to downplay the crisis in the Korean peninsula in its efforts to focus solely on Iraq. U.S. State Department officials initially dismissed the new North Korean moves as a "diplomatic striptease" aimed at luring the Bush administration to the negotiating table. Secretary of State Colin Powell ruled out talks until Pyongyang gave up its nuclear programme.

However, a slight change was evident in the U.S. diplomatic posture after a meeting between the senior diplomats of the U.S., Japan and South Korea in Washington in the second week of January. President Bush said that he was "open" to dialogue. But White House officials insist that North Korea will first have to give up its nuclear programme.

North Korea's neighbours, on the other hand, have reacted more responsibly. South Korea, Japan, China and Russia have emphasised the importance of the dialogue process in dealing with Pyongyang. Outgoing South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung has criticised the U.S. policy towards North Korea. He told a Cabinet meeting in the last week of December that Washington's policies would prove ineffective. "No policy of containment and isolation against communist countries has succeeded in history, even during the Cold War era," he said. He pledged to continue with his "sunshine policy" towards North Korea. His successor to the presidency, Roh Moo-Hyun, won the election virtually on an anti-American plank.

Work on an important railway line connecting the North and South Koreas is proceeding as per schedule despite the Bush administration's call for an economic blockade of North Korea. The South Korean government offered Cabinet-level talks with the North in the first week of January in a bid to defuse the tension.

Russia and China have also been critical of the U.S. policies towards North Korea. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that attempts to isolate Pyongyang economically would be counter-productive and would lead to a "new escalation in tensions". In the second week of January, the North Korean government declared that economic sanctions over its nuclear programme would mean war. "Sanctions mean war and a war knows no mercy. The U.S. should opt for dialogue with the DPRK," said a statement issued by the official North Korean agency, Korea Central News Agency.

Beijing too has reasons to worry about the serious developments in its neighbourhood. If the ham-handed U.S. diplomacy towards North Korea finally results in the latter formally acquiring nuclear weapons, it could start an arms race in the region. Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan could join the race, adding to the volatility in East Asia.

SENIOR South Korean officials recently visited Beijing, Moscow and Washington looking for ways towards a negotiated settlement to the crisis. The Korean crisis was on the top of the agenda when Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin met in Moscow in December. Both Moscow and Beijing are against the U.S. goal of a "regime change" in North Korea. At the same time, they are critical of Pyongyang's recent diplomatic tactics. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, while expressing her country's opposition to sanctions against North Korea, said in the second week of January that "the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is very important and beneficial to the Korean peninsula itself, the whole of Asia and the entire world".

According to many observers of the East Asian scene, peace and stability on the Korean peninsula are not difficult to achieve. Since the late 1980s, the leadership in Pyongyang had concluded that the way forward was to end enmity with Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. Pyongyang had made it clear then that it was willing to trade in its nuclear arms programme in return for an end to Washington's hostility. The Republican administration under President George Bush Sr. was cool to the idea of normalising relations. It was the Clinton administration which started the dialogue process in earnest, with the signing of the October 1994 Agreed Framework, whereby North Korea agreed to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear arms programme in return for two light water reactors for generating nuclear power. Under the agreement, the U.S. was to supply heavy fuel oil until the nuclear power stations were completed, and relax some of the economic sanctions. The accord halted North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

Washington, however, did not deliver on its promises. Work on the two reactors was deliberately delayed and North Korea remained diplomatically quarantined. By 1997, it had started issuing warnings to Washington that its patience was running out. In 1998, North Korea threatened to reopen the reactor at Yongbyon for maintenance, but it still did not break the 1994 accord. In another bid to draw U.S. attention, Pyongyang carried out the testing of its long-range missiles in August 1998. North Korea had been issuing warnings that it would go on developing missiles if the U.S. continued with its enmity. According to an American expert on the region, Leon V. Sigal, Pyongyang was not engaging in blackmail. "It was playing tit-for-tat, cooperating whenever Washington cooperated and retaliating when Washington reneged, in an effort to end enmity," he said.

The Clinton administration read the signals emanating from Pyongyang correctly after the missile tests. It sent Defence Secretary William Perry to Pyongyang in May 1999. Washington promised to end the sanctions imposed under the Trading with the Enemy Act, while Pyongyang agreed to suspend the test-launching of missiles while negotiations proceeded. During the last months of the Clinton presidency, the U.S., anticipating high-level talks with North Korea, even handed over to the latter a draft communique declaring an end to enmity. In response, the number two in the North Korean government, Jo Myong Rok, visited Washington in October 2000. A joint communique issued during the visit read: "Neither government would have hostile intent towards the other."

Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was in Pyongyang a few weeks later. During her visit, North Korea offered to freeze its missile programme to the standards set by the Missile Technology Control Regime, provided the U.S. compensated it for the revenues it lost, because of the non-completion of the nuclear power reactor. The Clinton administration informally agreed to pump in $200-300 million a year as investment and aid.

President Clinton was all set to visit Pyongyang at the fag-end of his term and formalise the end of adversarial relations between the two countries. However, owing to domestic political compulsions, the trip did not materialise. In a speech to the American Council on Foreign Relations in June last year, Clinton said: "We were very close to ending the North Korean missile programme in the year 2000. I believe if I had been willing to go there, we would have ended it."

His successor, George W. Bush, however completely reneged on the U.S. commitments. The Bush administration has been openly contemptuous of the North Korean government. The understanding the Clinton administration had reached with Pyongyang became irrelevant the day Bush put North Korea in the "axis of evil" category. The Bush administration then went on to demand prompt nuclear inspection of North Korean sites, without offering anything in return. The U.S. also wanted North Korea to adopt a "less threatening conventional military posture". This was an invitation to Pyongyang to put its military guard down, when 36,000 American troops are permanently based in South Korea to bolster an already strong South Korean Army.

In spite of its reservations, North Korea announced in June last year that it would agree to a deal on nuclear inspections with the U.S., provided its demands for electricity are met. But the U.S.' delay in providing for the first reactor led to a tremendous shortfall in power in North Korea. At the same time, Pyongyang had categorically warned that if "no measure is taken to compensate for the loss of electricity, the DPRK can no longer keep its nuclear activities in a state of freeze and implement the Agreed Framework".

But Bush is spoiling for a showdown despite Pyongyang's efforts to be conciliatory. North Korea even now says that it is willing to negotiate with the U.S. on all its security concerns. North Korea's Ambassador to the United Nations, Han Song Ryol, said in November that "everything was negotiable". He went on to add that his government was willing to resolve American security concerns through talks provided the Bush government had "a will to end its hostile policy".

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