January 16, 2003	Thursday	Ziqa'ad 12, 1423

TOKYO: A crisis over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions could well give impetus to moves towards a broader framework to grapple with security threats in Northeast Asia.

But skeptics argue that deep distrust and competing interests among major powers in the region — the US, China, Japan and Russia — mean anything remotely resembling an “Asian Nato” is at best a distant dream.

“On the surface, the interests of Russia, Japan, China seem to be converging. It seems no one wants to see N. Korea emerging with nuclear weapons,” said Mohan Malik, a professor at the Asia Pacific Center for Security in Honolulu.

The second crisis in a decade over Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programme intensified last week, when the Stalinist state said it was pulling out of the global nuclear non-proliferation treaty, sending diplomats scurrying in search of a solution.

“But if you scratch the surface, you can see conflicting interests. It’s jockeying for power,” Malik said. “Russia and Japan are the most important (ones pushing for multilateralism) but at the same time, they are not very influential players.”

Pessimists seeking proof that their misgivings are well-placed need look no further than Tuesday’s visit by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to a shrine honouring Japan’s war dead, where convicted war criminals are also enshrined.

The visit to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, seen by some as a symbol of Japan’s wartime militarism, sparked outrage from China and South Korea even as Asia-Pacific diplomats stepped up efforts to resolve the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programme.

“ASIAN SENSITIVITIES”: “Wider and longer-term, de facto, there is multilateral action, but no vision and no end-point,” said Jim Rolfe, a colleague of Malik’s at the Honolulu-based think tank.

Northeast Asia’s major powers, along with South Korea, have built up a complex web of two-way ties in the half-century since World War Two.

But the region has failed to craft any sort of multilateral defence mechanism even remotely resembling the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

“Comfort levels with multilateralism in the political and security areas are very different in East Asia. You have a real sensitivity,” said Brad Glosserman of the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum CSIS think tank.

Critics say the Asia-Pacific’s only security forum, the Association of South East Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF), is too diverse and divided to help much in keeping regional peace.

Its unwieldy membership list includes the 10 ASEAN members and the 15-member European Union, plus Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Korea, North Korea and the US.

Dissatisfaction with a toothless ASEAN Regional Forum has prompted Japan and others to suggest giving defence officials a role, and last June a new Asia-Pacific defence ministers’ forum was launched in hopes of jolting ARF into doing more than talk.

MOVES AFOOT: Among the many dynamics complicating multilateral security dialogue are Japan’s worries about China’s growing regional clout, Russia’s fears of China’s growing influence in Central Asia, an aversion in both Moscow and Beijing to any greater US influence, and simmering anti-US sentiment in South Korea.

But as diplomats criss-cross the globe in an effort to put North Korea’s nuclear genie back in the bottle, some analysts see nascent trends towards a regional security mechanism — though even optimists speak in terms of a decade or two.

“Multilateral relations in the region are progressing in the economic arena and now a search for a multilateral security framework is beginning,” said Tomoyuki Kojima, a political science professor at Keio University in Tokyo. “In Northeast Asia, dialogue has begun among Japan, China and South Korea. America can cooperate with that from the side,” Kojima said, adding that Asian nations were keen to find a way to moderate Washington’s growing tendency to act on its own.

Leaders of China, South Korea and Japan held their first summit on the sidelines of so-called “ASEAN+3” gatherings in 1999 and have done so each year since, most recently in November in Phnom Penh, when talks on a wayward North Korea dominated.

“The question is, is it just ‘plus three’ or should Russia, Mongolia, North Korea be involved?” Rolfe said. “It is quite possible that there will be some conference of five or six powers meeting to deal with the (North Korean) nuclear issue. The question is, do they just leave it at that or try for a wider security discussion?” he said.

“I don’t think they are ready for that.”—Reuters