SINGAPORE/BEIJING: The drawn-out negotiating process tried and tested by isolated North Korea for decades has begun with revelations it is softening its position on its nuclear ambitions.
But will the United States play ball this time and how much pressure is China bringing to bear — on both sides?
The principal players are apprehensive. Impoverished communist North Korea fears it is next on the US hit list after being lumped with Iraq and Iran in President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”.
In the corridors of power in Washington, policymakers are juggling the impossible with the pragmatic as they wonder how to end the nuclear crisis without appearing to pay off blackmailers.
“What is the US objective?” said Michael McKinley of the department of political science at Australian National University in Canberra.
“If the objective is regime change then that is a serious impediment, but if the objective is a lower level of hostility and crisis, then what you do is you talk about the requirements.”
The latest twist in a crisis that erupted last October when the United States said reclusive North Korea had admitted to a covert programme to enrich uranium for weapons came from China.
DIPLOMATIC FINESSE: In a stunning display of diplomacy that finessed the US game of hardball, a Chinese foreign ministry official told Western diplomats on Monday Pyongyang had offered terms for a deal at talks in Beijing last week with US and Chinese officials.
North Korea did not have a “to-hell-with-you attitude as portrayed in the US media”, said one diplomat at the briefing.
“North Korea was offering a way to achieve what the US says it wants to achieve. It wasn’t old blackmail,” the diplomat said.
Washington had given out scant details, except for the dramatic revelation that North Korean officials had told US negotiators that they possessed nuclear arms. There was no hint that Pyongyang had hinted at a real deal.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell had to come out publicly to say China was right and North Korea had indeed come up with concessions — albeit costly ones.
“North Korea offered the US a deal, but the Americans were caught flat-footed,” said the diplomat.
Perhaps that was why the three parties to the in camera talks last week in the secluded Diaoyutai state guest house in central Beijing have painted such different pictures of what went on.
ATTITUDE BUT NO POLICY: “Some say the current US administration doesn’t have a policy but an attitude,” said McKinley. “That is a very accurate encapsulation of what the problem is.”
That, say analysts, is a source of concern to Beijing, which had brokered last week’s breakthrough talks that put a period to a six-month standoff as Washington and Pyongyang balked at suggestions they climb off their high horses and make a deal.
“The Chinese would clearly be concerned about what would happen,” said McKinley. “The Chinese believe the Americans could strike North Korea.”
Regional powers — China, Japan and South Korea — are all of a similar mind about the undesirability of military action against communist North Korea, which has the world’s fifth-largest standing army and an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, if not its own atomic bomb.
China, sharing a long border with North Korea and the closest remaining friend of the last Cold War communist state, is eager to avoid instability on that border and a flood refugees.
And it certainly doesn’t mind appearing to be the sober statesman arbitrating between the extremes of beleaguered communist Pyongyang and the prosperous capitalist United States.
“The Chinese have a better understanding of the North Koreans than this current US administration,” said McKinley, adding that the clear signs of North Korea softening its position could well have come as a result of Chinese pressure.
Throughout the latest crisis, Washington has been eager to avoid being seen as paying off bad behaviour — with all the implications that could have for others seeking to back Washington into a corner.—Reuters
