BANGKOK: Nothing would please US President George W. Bush more than if North Korea’s Kim Jong-il were to stick to spreading manure rather than weapons of mass destruction.
The reclusive North Korean leader has re-emerged after 40 days out of the public eye to give army farmers advice on how to fertilise the fields and to learn that Bush, though frustrated in efforts to persuade North Korea to renounce its nuclear ambitions, is offering security assurances.
That unprecedented show of flexibility by Bush, who also renewed a pledge not to invade North Korea, piles the pressure on Kim, and how he will respond is one of the many unknowns about his secretive state.
“It takes two to tangle,” said Aidan Foster-Carter, Korea expert at Britain’s Leeds University.
Bush discussed the proposal on the sidelines of a Pacific Rim summit in Bangkok with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia — the four other members of six-party North Korea nuclear crisis talks that include North Korea.
“Bush’s comments are no doubt primarily aimed at the other four parties as much as — or more than — at North Korea,” said Ralph Cossa, head of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank in Hawaii.
“South Korea keeps calling for increased US flexibility, as do the Chinese,” he said. “This provides an example of it at the very highest level and also tells hardliners in Washington that Bush really is prepared to negotiate.”
That readiness to negotiate on new terms is a policy long espoused by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and marks a shift by Bush after months in which the United States appeared unsure of what tack to take since it said last October North Korea had admitted to a nuclear arms programme.
“The president’s statements are designed as much to push his own government into action as they are to enable another round of talks,” said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington.
“They are a sign that he is growing frustrated about the members of the administration who are locked into hardline positions,” he said.
No details have been revealed of what the US assurances might contain, but they will almost certainly be part of a phased approach under which North Korea does not have to do everything before the United States does something.
Although a first, and unavoidable, step must be that North Korea agrees to disarm and invites back the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors were thrown out at the beginning of the year when North Korea quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, analysts said.
Bush may show signs he wants to resolve the issue. Kim Jong-il, too, is probably seeking a solution. Each wants his own terms and each knows a compromise will emerge.
However, Kim seized his opportunity to remind leaders in Bangkok that they could not afford to ignore him, firing at least one, and possibly two, short-range surface-to-ship missiles into the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
“This is no big deal from a military point of view,” said Cossa. “Politically, however, it demonstrates once again the North Korean desire not to be upstaged and to attract attention when the focus is elsewhere.”
Kim’s re-appearance at an army farm on Monday — also the first day of the two-day Pacific Rim summit — after vanishing from public view after the September 9 celebrations of the 55th anniversary of North Korea’s founding may have been no coincidence.
“He clearly has gone to ground,” said Foster-Carter, adding that Pyongyang’s decision to put off twice already a visit by a leader of its last near ally — Chinese Communist Party number two Wu Bangguo — was a sign of possible political confusion in the secretive state.
“Kim Jong-il may be a nuisance but he is not by any means a complete idiot,” said Foster-Carter. “He may be pondering his own way to carry out shock and awe North Korean-style or he may come back to the table to see what’s on offer.
“I expect it will be the latter.”
Bush and his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo-hyun, in a policy shift to re-energize the six-party talks held in Beijing last August, called on Monday for a fresh round at an early date and urged North Korea to refrain from action that could exacerbate the crisis.
Forecasting how Kim will respond to the Bush initiative — vague as it now stands — amounts to crystal-ball gazing.
“This should increase pressure on North Korea, although it is hard to predict how they will react,” said Cossa. “They could see it as weakness and just press even harder — wrong conclusion, but they have misread things before.” Russian officials said a multilateral formula was almost certain.
“I am positive multilateral guarantees are much better than bilateral guarantees because people are cautious about believing in American guarantees after the Iraqi war,” said one top Russian diplomat.—Reuters