Gordon Fairclough in Seoul, Charles Hutzler in Beijing and Christopher Cooper in WashingtonPyongyang's Tough Talk May Unite Its Adversaries
North Korea's tough tactics may be backfiring.
At six-way talks in Beijing last week, North Korea attempted to turn the tables on the U.S., saying that perceived American hostility was forcing Pyongyang to develop nuclear weapons. Instead, North Korea's delegation was told by the U.S., South Korea and Japan, as well as by longtime allies China and Russia, that its nuclear ambitions wouldn't be tolerated.
In response, North Korea lashed out, saying it wasn't interested in continuing the negotiations. "The talks only reinforced our confidence that there is no other option for us but to increase the nuclear deterrent force," said a statement issued by Pyongyang's foreign ministry on Saturday and carried by the government-run Korean Central News Agency.
But those dismissive comments, coupled with threats during the talks that North Korea would test a nuclear weapon and demonstrate its ability to deliver one, seem likely to drive the U.S. and Pyongyang's other opponents closer.
One Bush administration official, speaking to reporters after the talks, said "It's worse now for North Korea than it has been, this isolation." Another U.S. official put it more bluntly "We're letting them dig their own grave."
Bush administration officials note, along with other analysts, that negotiators for the Clinton administration met about 50 times with the North Koreans before arriving at a 1994 accord that defused a nuclear crisis. They also note that North Korea hewed to a similar pattern of bluster following the first meeting in the current round with the U.S. and China this April. During that meeting, North Korea threatened to test a nuclear weapon. And following the meeting, it said it saw no reason to continue talks with the U.S. and others.
"It's predictable behavior," said James Lilley, a former ambassador to South Korea and China. "It's an interesting play going on."
Although Washington has repeatedly said it would offer no incentives to North Korea until it fully disarms, Richard Armitage, deputy U.S. secretary of state, has held out the possibility of bestowing on North Korea something it has long pursued a normalization of relations. "Ultimately, [Secretary of State Colin Powell] has said that at the end of a process that normalization could be something that would be considered -- normalization of relations," Mr. Armitage said. "But we're a long way from that."
Militarily, the U.S. doesn't have many good options. With extensive operations under way in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. isn't in a position to mount yet another invasion and nation-building exercise. Airstrikes would be unlikely to solve the problem because the U.S. lacks sufficient intelligence to target all of the possible hiding places for the components of the North's nuclear-weapons programs.
"There are a lot of different aspects to a nuclear program that has become very large over the years," a U.S. State Department official said.
Any attempt by the U.S. administration to block Pyongyang's missile exports and alleged illicit-drug sales by intercepting the country's ships could also be difficult to carry out. North Korea could evade the net by using aircraft. And stopping ships on the high seas risks contravening international law.
China, which has veto power on the United Nations Security Council, so far has opposed council action against North Korea. And Beijing and Seoul, which are the most important sources of food, fuel and other economic assistance to the North, have balked at imposing their own economic sanctions.
That likely would change if North Korea follows through on its threats to declare itself a nuclear power or test an atomic weapon or long-range ballistic missile. U.N. action against Pyongyang would be likely, analysts say, and there would be much more support for sanctions.
In a sign of how North Korea's opponents are banding together after its tough words, South Korea's foreign minister, Yoon Young Kwan, warned the North on Sunday that if it "takes measures that would further aggravate the situation," that would "result in a loss of trust from the other five countries" and isolate Pyongyang.
Yet Mr. Yoon also called for continuing the talks, an opinion echoed on Monday by China. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at a conference in the Philippines of Asian legislators, singled out Washington's policy toward North Korea as "a main problem" in the negotiations. But he called on the two countries to narrow their differences in what he predicted would be a long bargaining progress.
"This might be a long, long trip," Mr. Wang said, as quoted by The Associated Press.
Just the fact that the parties are talking doesn't mean that they are intent on reaching an agreement, cautions Scott Snyder, Korea representative of the U.S.-based Asia Foundation and the author of a book on North Korea's negotiating tactics. Both sides could just be playing for time, he says.
"There's not an appetite for either compromise or confrontation in Washington," says Mr. Snyder. Likewise, he says, North Korea may just be using delaying tactics to move ahead with its nuclear-development efforts.
Indeed, it is far from clear that even a nuclear test would result in the use of force against North Korea. The U.S. is "not allowing anything the North Koreans say or do to push them into crisis mode, because that plays into [Pyongyang's] hands," says Victor Cha, a Korea specialist at Georgetown University in Washington.
Japan, which is within range of North Korean ballistic missiles, is gradually revising its post-World War II pacifism in favor of a more normal defense stance. On Friday, Tokyo's Defense Agency announced that it was requesting $1.21 billion in its fiscal 2004 budget to spend on a two-tiered ballistic-missile defense system.
For its part, Beijing is as worried about the U.S. as it is about North Korea. An avowedly nuclear North Korea isn't in itself threatening to China, Chinese scholars say, but it could invite U.S. intervention. That could prove disruptive to the region's peace and hence to the foreign trade and investment China's economy depends on.
China sees its options as so limited that should North Korea publicly declare itself a nuclear power, Beijing is unlikely to acknowledge the declaration without incontrovertible proof, says Gu Guoliang, an arms-control expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Many strategic analysts don't believe North Korea really intends to give up its nuclear arms. The country has struggled for decades, investing huge amounts of money and effort, to develop them and seems to be relying on the weapons to make up for a costly conventional military that is in decline, suffering from malnourished recruits and shortages of fuel.
"I don't think Kim Jong Il will ever give up everything he has. He will retain something -- technology, scientists, fissile material," said Kongdan Oh, a Korea specialist at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Washington think tank that advises the Pentagon. "Under this current [North Korean] leadership, there is no way all of these weapons programs can be wiped away."
---- Sebastian Moffett in Tokyo contributed to this article.