North Korea: the next stop?

THE six-party talks, expected to begin on August 26 in Beijing, will determine whether the crisis created by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions is amenable to a peaceful solution. The multilateral negotiations will involve North Korea, United States, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.

Washington appears to have opted for a dual-track strategy involving dialogue and diplomacy as well as punitive measures to apply pressure on Pyongyang. While the Bush administration is united to end North Korea’s nuclear programme, it is deeply divided over how to achieve that aim. The hardliners in Washington insist on the need for “regime change”, others are prepared to let Kim Jong-Il stay in power provided the nuclear programme is fully dismantled and the process is verified by intrusive nuclear inspections across North Korea.

A former CIA director and an ex-defence secretary have added muscle to a lobbying campaign by US hawks urging a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities. Details of a war strategy for invading North Korea and toppling its regime within 30 to 60 days have been provided in a recent Wall Street Journal article, co-written by former CIA director James Woosley and a retired US air force lt.-general Thomas McInerney.

Mr Woosley, who is Pentagon’s adviser and a close ally of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld is thought to reflect Pentagon’s thinking. He was an early proponent of an invasion of Iraq and the fact that he has now turned his attention to North Korea is not without significance.

Woosley’s war plan includes 4,000 daily air strikes against North Korean targets, the deployment of cruise missiles and stealth aircraft to destroy the Yong Byon nuclear plant and other nuclear facilities, the stationing of US marine forces off the coast of North Korea to threaten a land attack on Pyongyang, the deployment of two additional US army divisions to bolster South Korean troops in a land offensive against North Korea, and the call-up of national guards and reserve units to replace US combat forces that are currently bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to Mr Woosley and lt.-general McInerney, base infrastructure available in the region and accessibility of North Korea from the sea should make it possible to generate around 4,000 sorties a day compared to 800 a day in the recent Iraq war.

Some analysts predict that North Korea could test a nuclear warhead by the end of this year. Woosley and McInerney have warned that a war could soon become necessary to prevent North Korea from selling weapon-grade plutonium to “rogue” states and terrorist organizations. “The world has weeks to months at most, to deal with this issue, not months to years,” Mr. Woosley and Lt. General McInerney wrote.

Similar warning have been issued by William Perry, the former US defence secretary, who said North Korea and the United States were drifting towards war — perhaps as early as this year. It is difficult to say to what extent is this merely geopolitical games-manship. The blunt talk from Washington is occurring at a time when serious diplomatic efforts are being made to find a peaceful solution to the impasse.

Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo and Moscow want to prevent a nuclear-armed North Korea triggering an Asian arms race which will destabilize the region. An air attack on North Korean facilities is likely to provoke a full-scale war. Also, US forces are already stretched thin by the occupation of Iraq, the US budget deficit is growing (projected at 5 per cent of the GDP for 2003) and President Bush’s campaign would not be helped by an East Asian war, particularly so soon after the recent Iraq war. President Bush has repeatedly made it clear that he favours a peaceful resolution of the crisis but at the same time he has pointedly refused to rule out a military attack.

Peace and stability on the Korean peninsula are crucial to South Korea, China and Japan which together account for one-quarter of the world’s population. South Korea, the world’s eleventh biggest economy is particularly vulnerable. All the 47 million of its people live within the range of North Korean missiles and its capital Seoul is just 50 kilometres south of the North Korean border and most of the city is within artillery range of the North.

According to Pentagon estimates, one million people, most of them South Koreans, could die in the first month of the war. If North Korea carries out its threat to attack Japan, the human and economic cost could be staggering.

Another South Korean worry is that the cost of rebuilding the North in the event of reunification would cripple the southern economy. A unified Korea under a pro-US South Korean establishment is an anathema to Beijing. It is not the thought of a united Korea but of the US troops on the Yalu River which can cause sleepless nights for the Chinese leadership. The hawks in Washington may be thinking of a regime change in Pyongyang but they have to realize that it would be a lot harder to act unilaterally on the Korean peninsula against the wishes of the countries in the region than it was in the case of Iraq.

China can play a pivotal role in the resolution of the crisis created by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Beijing has more leverage on Pyongyang than any other country. China provides almost 70 per cent of North Korea’s energy and a third of its food. China may assist in resolving the current crisis in the following manner: it may ask the US non-aggression assurance to North Korea, co-sponsored by China; South Korea and Japan may be asked to provide economic aid in the form of development project financing; and China may persuade North Korea to agree to nuclear inspections conducted by China and Russia, in close collaboration with the International Atomic Agency, to verify the complete dismantling of North Korea’s plutonium and uranium-based weapons programme.

However, a likely obstacle to China’s peace efforts could be the US negotiators scepticism about any promises made by North Korea, given Pyongyang’s track record particularly the breaking of the 1994 pact it signed with the Clinton administration.

Even Beijing which once described its relationship with Pyongyang as being as close as “lips and teeth” appears to be growing weary of its inscrutable neighbour. China fears that an economic collapse next door will lead to millions of North Koreans crossing into China and King Jong-Il’s nuclear programme will oblige South Korea and Japan to follow suit.

Many analysts believe that Mr. Kim will be prepared to trade off his nuclear programme for economic assistance and a non-aggression pact with the US. After all, the basic cause of this current nuclear crisis is that Mr. Kim needs economic assistance to avoid economic collapse while Washington requires strict verification of North Korea’s nuclear rollback.

It is also clear that left to these two parties, (like India-Pakistan’s unending feud over Kashmir) the resolution of the current crisis will remain as remote as ever. That is why China’s role becomes pivotal for a peaceful settlement.

The roadmap towards a solution, according to media reports, being sketched out by the six governments that will participate in the talks is likely to be along the following lines: North Korea will be offered a short-term security guarantee in return for an immediate freeze of its nuclear programme. A permanent dismantling of the programme would then be negotiated, with Pyongyang allowing unlimited inspections and the US and its partners offering normal relations and economic aid.

The US has repeatedly insisted that North Korea must permanently dismantle its nuclear programme before it is eligible for any rewards. Since the cost of the war would be very high, the US may accept a deal involving simultaneous and phased concessions from both sides.

Any settlement with Pyongyang will be resisted by those in Washington who think that a regime change is as legitimate an objective in North Korea as it was in Iraq. The North Korean secretive leaders, for their part, worry that the US will trick them into giving up nuclear weapons and then try to topple the regime anyway. So the obstacles in ending the nuclear crisis through talks are as formidable as the bunkers on either side of the demilitarized zone.

The forthcoming six-party talks in Beijing should help clarify matters. With the involvement of China and Russia in these talks, prospects for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis have vastly improved. A multilateral pact appears significantly more attainable today than just a few months ago. The outcome of the Beijing talks will be watched with keen interest as alternative to a peaceful settlement is frightening indeed.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

The candles of hope

WILL people-to-people contact succeed when it has yielded little result in the past? This is the question which is increasingly being asked both in India and Pakistan. The answer depends on what the posers of the question are seeking. No, Kashmir may not be solved. The contact will help evolve a solution.

People-to-people contact is, however, a misnomer. Visits of some parliamentary members, journalists or their conclaves do not mean that this contact has taken place. There should be meetings between different members of the society — lawyers, doctors, academicians, entrepreneurs, industrialists and students — involving the common man as well. Only then will the process become meaningful.

The wider the contact the lesser will be the mistrust — the mistrust of the last 55 years. People will begin to realize how much they have in common. They will come to develop a strong desire to accommodate one another to live peacefully. Even obdurate governments will then seek a compromise.

We have missed many opportunities. During the 1962 India-China war, the Shah of Iran wrote to General Ayub Khan to send his forces to fight by the side of India.

The Shah sent the letter’s copy to the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who, in turn, marked it to Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. I was then Shastri’s press officer and read the letter.

Long after the 1962 war, Shastri recalled the letter. If General Ayub had sent his forces to fight by the side of Indian forces, he said, the scenario would have changed. Shastri said: Had the blood of Indian and Pakistani jawans flowed together at the battlefield, it would have been difficult to say ‘no’ even if Pakistan had asked for Kashmir.

Shastri’s observation was probably true. Instead, we have had three wars and the Kargil engagements. They have increased the distance further. The basic thing is to remove the animosity which has been fostered and nurtured on both sides since day one after partition.

It means changing the thinking in the two countries. But fighting religious prejudice, a legacy of hundreds of years, is not an easy thing to do.

First the British and then some leaders pandered to communal elements to keep the two communities apart. The bias they have planted is deep. To uproot it, the idea of a pluralistic society would have to be re-sown. Straightaway, the official propaganda by one against another country must stop. This was the agreement reached between Nehru and Liaquat Ali when mistrust on both sides took the shape of killings.

There is no bar on the sale of newspapers and books of one country to the other. But cussed bureaucrats have managed things in such a way that no newspaper or book can cross the border. The Pakistan government has now disallowed even the viewing of Indian TV channels.

Even after a modicum of contact, things are not moving because of the cloistered thinking in the governments which do not look beyond scoring points. How can there be people-to-people contact when visas are not issued and police harassment continues?

Six months after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee spoke at Srinagar for a dialogue and Pakistan Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s telephone call to congratulate him, there has been only one bus plying daily each way carrying 37 passengers. Islamabad may be blamed for not allowing more busses and air and train contacts. It seems as if Islamabad is holding contacts hostage to the Kashmir solution.

Why doesn’t New Delhi unilaterally open its borders and set up a post at the Wagah border itself to issue visas? Terrorists do not use this way to come in if that is what bothers the Indian government. The media on both sides can help. But it is jingoistic in thinking and cynical in approach. It looks for negative stories all the time. No wonder, they scoff at the “candle wallas” because they challenge their biased views. What to do about the bigoted writers who distort the partition perspective and say that it was necessary for “interrupting the 12,000 years old Islamization process running across the subcontinent?”

Because of their mindset, the press, radio and television gave very little attention to the history made at the Wagah border a few days ago. For the first time since independence, 12 members of the National Assembly and Senate of Pakistan crossed into India to join the candle-lighting ceremony at the border on the 14-15 August midnight, the hour when India and Pakistan became free.

By participating in the ceremony, the Pakistan MPs defied the dictates of the military and the mulla not to have any truck with Indians. MPs did more than that. Aitzaz Hasan, one of Pakistan’s best minds, was their leader. He said: “Open the borders to let people meet who are determined not to go to war ever.”

Fauzia Wahab urged women on both sides to have a vested interest in peace so that “the hatred and bitterness of the past is not forced upon the future generations of Indians and Pakistanis.” She said she could see the mood of the people in Pakistan changing after the recent contacts. They should not stop.

MPs were not alone to project the message of amity. People were behind them. When I went to the other side of the Wagah border to bring the MPs to India, I found a milling crowd of at least 25,000 with white flags aloft, to see them off. Asma Jehangir, I.A. Rehman, Jugnu Sethi and many more human rights activists were in the crowd. Theirs has been an untiring effort to span the distance between the two countries.

Not long ago the government had banned their visits to the Indian border. The religious bodies had threatened to attack them. But the mood seems to have changed. Officials were cooperative and the followers of religious bodies waved the Pakistan flags to express their support. Indeed, a favourable wind is blowing in Pakistan. When I led a parliamentary delegation to that country two months ago, even religious formations said they wanted peace.

I wish I could say the same thing about India. Most intellectuals and experts on this side have a mindset. They have their knives ready when the efforts fail. They do not want to believe that people in Pakistan can change. However, the public in India is beginning to distance itself from such intellectuals. There were at least one and a half lakh people at Wagah to applaud the MPs from Pakistan. Celebrations and songs to extol friendship between the two countries continued till three in the morning.

How different was the scene this time from the one in 1995! That was when only a few of us — former chief justice of the Delhi High Court Rajinder Sacher, Outlook editor Vinod Mehta, former vice-chancellor Amrik Singh, human rights activist Sayeeda, Sikh leader Manjit Singh Calcutta, the late Nikhil Chakravarty of the Mainstream and myself — lighted candles at the Wagah border. What was a small initiative then is turning into a people’s movement. Let it spread.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi.

No place for religion

WE had thought the day was past when state authorities in the United States defied federal court orders applying the Bill of Rights to state actions.

Yet Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore has so far refused to say whether he will comply with a court order to remove the giant monument to the Ten Commandments he installed in Alabama’s high court, and he has suggested that the federal courts lack the power to make him do so.

Two federal courts — including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta — have declared the monument a violation of the First Amendment, which prohibits state establishments of religion. US District Judge Myron H. Thompson last week ordered it removed and made clear that he is prepared to hold the state in contempt if his order is not honoured by Aug. 20.

Yet Chief Justice Moore, who has made display of the commandments the centrepiece of his public legal career, seems to think a lawful court order is a matter for negotiation. Amazingly, Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. — the state’s chief law enforcement officer and President Bush’s nominee for a seat on the 11th Circuit — has not troubled himself to say a word in defence of the rule 6of law.

The chief justice’s antics would be little more than silliness, save for two big problems. First, they put Alabama’s judicial system behind the notion that contemporary American law flows from divinity, rather than from the votes of representatives elected by the people — that approaching a court is tantamount to approaching a church.

Chief Justice Moore says the case is about whether the state can acknowledge God, but displaying the Ten Commandments in a courthouse does a lot more than that. It promotes a particular theology as somehow linked to the justice dispensed by the Alabama judiciary, which is precisely what the First Amendment forbids government to do.

More important still is that Chief Justice Moore, in suggesting that he might respond with something other than swift compliance, challenges what has been an undisputed part of America’s constitutional fabric since the civil rights era’s desegregation decisions. The federal courts are the guardians of Americans’ constitutional liberties against state abuses, and state officials don’t get to reject that role when it doesn’t suit them.

The issue here is religious freedom, not voting rights or school desegregation, but the principle is the same: If Chief Justice Moore can decide which federal court opinions he likes, nobody’s rights are safe from state officials who don’t believe in them. —The Washington Post

US reviewing Mideast strategy

US policy-makers are realizing that conquering Iraq was easier than managing its occupation and maintaining relations with regional powers. After proclaiming in early May that the war in Iraq was over, President Bush finds that the US is facing what has been called by the Central Command a guerilla war, with a daily toll of lives on both sides.

There is a rising sentiment in Washington in favour of a UN resolution that would enable forces from many countries, including Pakistan, India, Turkey and others from Europe to join in the peacekeeping process. The Security Council Resolution 1483 had passed the authority to rule Iraq to the Coalition headed by the US. The course of events since then has shown that the task entails costs in money and casualties that are straining the US and also convey the impression of a new imperialism that is being opposed. The proposal that the security duties be entrusted to the Iraqis themselves, is seen as unrealistic in the foreseeable future since it will be some time before a large enough Iraqi force is available.

The attacks on the US forces are becoming more frequent and it is being realized that much more needs to be done to win over Iraqi people. The recent incident of the car bomb attack on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad suggests that the countries supportive of the US are also being targeted. Attacks have also taken place on the British occupation troops in Basra over the failure to provide basic amenities such as water and electricity. Reference was made by the civilian head of the US occupation forces, Paul Bremer, to the return to Iraq of some of the militants who had left immediately after the attack in March.

The unilateralist lobby that has been the main driving force behind the Bush foreign policy is still intact and retains its influence. However, some of the negative consequences, including chronic instability in Afghanistan and Iraq have led to increasing calls for adapting to realities. After nearly twenty months of occupation, the writ of the Karzai government in Afghanistan remains confined to Kabul. This has led to a realization that the neglect of reconstruction is a major cause of instability there.

President Bush is, perhaps, realizing that the economic costs of the Iraq war and the fairly high US casualties are affecting his popularity as election time approaches. The Democrats are becoming more vociferous in their criticism of the way the occupation has fared in Iraq and even in Afghanistan. He is already on the defensive and had to state publicly that the long-term goal of the US was to bring democracy and prosperity to Iraq. President Bush is paying more attention to the growing body of opinion in the US that favours an enhanced role for the UN in Iraq, as well as a greater effort to mould opinion in the Arab world and Islamic countries.

Greater US interest in a Palestine solution has been one major initiative, and a truce is in force between the Israeli authorities and the Palestine administration, though discontent is growing on the Palestinian side on many counts. Only same 300 prisoners were released by Israel, which holds over 6,000 in custody. The Sharon government appear reluctant to implement the provisions of the roadmap, insisting that the Palestinian militants must be disarmed first. Despite US objections, the work continues on the fence along the West Bank, involving acquisition of additional territory by Israel. In addition, the basic requirement of withdrawing from Palestinian towns and territories is not being implemented.

The US has to move towards a more balanced position, if there is to be progress on the roadmap. Other parties backing the roadmap, notably EU and Russia are getting restive, as violent incidents continue, with Israel inflicting casualties that are strongly resented. Though secretary of state Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleeza Rice are urging both sides to follow the roadmap, Israel and the Zionist lobby in the US assume that the traditional US backing to Israeli concerns will he maintained. On the other hand, frustration among the Arab countries are growing.

Judging from the current policies, the Bush administration is already moving away from reliance exclusively on an overwhelming force that was implied by the Bush doctrine of pre-emption. Despite calls from some hacks, there is no likelihood of Syria or Iran being targeted, even though both are blamed for encouraging militancy by Hezbollah in Lebanon. With the US forces already over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan, pressures are mounting far greater UN role, and for concentrating on reconstruction rather than an the anti-terrorist campaign.

President Bush is becoming concerned that the economic downturn, to which the war on Iraq has contributed, may erode his chances of re-election, specially as important aspects of domestic welfare programmes are being denied federal funding. The kind of scenario in which his father failed to he re-elected in 1992 appears to he shaping up again. There had been a gradual revamping of the US strategies in both Iraq and Afghanistan, though the tough facade is being maintained, mainly by the hawks who still talk about the military option in Iran and even North Korea. The changes that are being introduced are considerable, and those in Afghanistan will impact Pakistan directly. While the anti-terrorist operations will continue, as Osama bin Ladin and Mulla Umar are still at large, the focus is shifting towards reconstruction in Afghanistan that has made little headway so far.

The US has appointed Ambassador William Taylor as the coordinator for reconstruction, and a programme that will cost the US $1 billion wall be launched. With NATO having assumed the responsibility for heading ISAF, greater efforts will he made to spread the writ of the Karzai government beyond Kabul. President Karzai hay carried out a reshuffle with US backing, and Warlord Ismail Khan has been replaced in Herat.

Changes have been made to improve coordination among the anti-terrorist forces of the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Criticism has been voiced within the US on the virtual failure of the US to follow up its military victory over the Taliban with measures to improve law and order, so that the warlords with whom the US was cooperating have become involved with the drug trade. Indeed the only economic activity that has flourished in Afghanistan is production and export of heroin, since enough funds and political efforts have not been invested to establish a viable state in Afghanistan.

The US had made the mistake of abandoning Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet farces in 1989 that enabled Al Qaeda to establish itself there. Fears have been expressed that given present trend, Afghanistan could become a failed state where terrorism could again become a serious problem, as is evident from rising Taliban insurgency. The involvement of NATO in Afghanistan is expected to increase European involvement with establishing law and order, and speeding up reconstruction.

In Iraq also, where the military occupation is entailing heavy costs, efforts are being made not only to increase the international involvement in peacekeeping, but also to shift gears towards reconstruction. With the policing and administration resulting in strains on the military resources of the US, a greater international role for the UN is becoming a necessity. The neo-conservatives in the Bash administration may continue to use the language of pre-emption, but the “imperialist overstretch” identified by Paul Kennedy as a check on the rise of a new imperialism has already made its appearance.

The US has remained the dominant power in the word since the Second World War, but managed that with a skilful combination of military superiority and benign diplomacy. President Bush is now paying greater attention to those advisers who call for a shift from exclusive reliance on dominant force to greater reliance on the UN and other multilateral institutions.

The immediate change of strategy is becoming increasingly visible in Afghanistan and Iraq. Greater involvement in the Middle East peace process, and awareness of sensitivities in the Arab and Islamic countries are going to be the other facets of the traditional US role.

Apart from improving the image of President Bush within the US, this review could also produce a welcome change in its global outlook, toward addressing the real problems of poverty and backwardness in the world. It is the neglect of political and economic problems that has contributed to the rise of terrorism in the world.

Safer drugs for children

The US Congress and America’s Food and Drug Administration have been working for more than two decades to devise better ways of encouraging paediatric testing of drugs.

One commendable approach, part of the law since 1997, has been to offer drug companies a six-month extension on their patents if they conduct such tests. Still, nearly three-quarters of drugs children now use have not been tested for that purpose. The FDA attempted to change that in 1998 with a rule that requires companies to conduct paediatric testing of new drugs and, in situations where the FDA believes it is warranted, of medications already on the market as well. But a federal judge last year overturned the so-called Paediatric Rule, finding that the FDA had overstepped its authority in issuing it.—The Washington Post