Word: pyongyang
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Getting North Korea to agree to six-way talks on its nuclear program - as opposed to the one-on-one with Washington demanded by Pyongyang - was a small victory for U.S. diplomacy. But as the August 27 meeting in Beijing draws near, anxiety is growing over what will transpire there. The Bush Administration insists that North Korea not be offered concessions to reward nuclear blackmail, and the presence of China, Russia, South Korea and Japan will certainly add to the pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program and submit to a tough inspection and verification regime. At the same...
...find ways to increase pressure on North Korea. The diplomats' hands were strengthened when the North walked away from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty last January, broke into a stash of plutonium that had been secured by the U.N. and ousted inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. To force Pyongyang to the table, Beijing last March cut off North Korea's energy lifeline--an oil pipeline from northeastern China--for three days...
...public, the Bush Administration has always scorned a deal under which the North would be rewarded for its blackmail tactics. Hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld think an agreement of that type during the Clinton Administration allowed Pyongyang to further develop its nuclear programs, and they have resisted direct talks with the North. Instead, they favor increasing sanctions and the interdiction of materiel vital to the North's programs...
Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo last week returned from a four-day trip to Pyongyang, where he met with Korean leader Kim Jong Il and other officials. The next day China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, said that "China hopes to see the quick resumption of the peace talks." U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week that he expected some diplomatic developments soon. Senior State Department officials say Pyongyang has accepted the idea of three-way talks. On Friday Dai met with Powell, Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. But Administration sources say that Powell...
Even if talks start, there are enormous risks. Washington could miscalculate how much diplomatic pressure to apply to the North or run such a tough interdiction regime that Pyongyang responds with more provocations like the one along the DMZ last week. That in turn could prompt China to abandon its efforts to nudge the North into making concessions. Overhanging all this is the suspicion that in the end, North Korea is simply dead set on getting nukes, no matter what the cost. "We need nuclear weapons to survive if the U.S. continues to isolate and pressure us," North Korea...