WORLD AFFAIRS

Conflicting signals

P.S. SURYANARAYANA
in Singapore

The suspension of work on a power project in North Korea backed by a U.S. consortium when the six-party talks were to resume raises serious questions about the U.S. game plan.

IN the second half of November when United States Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly was holding consultations with some key neighbours of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), an international consortium working on an electricity project designed to help Pyongyang tide over a chronic energy shortage, chose to announce a one-year suspension of the work, at least partially.

AHN YOUNG-JOON/AP

Work in progress at the Light Water Reactor Project undertaken by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation. A file picture.

The timing of the decision by the U.S.-led consortium, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), raised the inevitable question whether Washington had now decided to blow hot and cold in its dealings with the DPRK. Immensely relevant to this new context was a positive statement that President George W. Bush had made during his visit to several East Asian countries and Australia in the second half of October. As interpreted by his foreign policy advisers, there was no ambiguity about Bush's new willingness to provide Pyongyang with some definitive "security assurances" so that it could be persuaded to renounce its nuclear weapons `programme'.

Significantly, the intention of the U.S. to consider such "security assurances" over an indefinite period of time had helped Pyongyang soften its opposition to a new round of six-party talks on the Korean nuclear issue in its entirety. The DPRK has long claimed that its nuclear-weapons `programme' was undertaken in response to the security `threats' from the U.S., which was evident in Bush's characterisation of Pyongyang as a nodal point in a new "axis of evil" and his policy of pre-emptive strikes against perceived enemies.

Now, the prospects of further multilateral parleys, with the possibility of some form of a security guarantee underwritten by the U.S., were the subjects of prime concern to Kelly and his interlocutors in Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul during his visit to these countries. It was against this background of renewed diplomatic optimism that the KEDO executive board struck by announcing on November 21 that the light water reactor (LWR) project would remain suspended for one year beginning December 1.

Why did the KEDO decide to vitiate the atmosphere for the possible resumption of the multilateral talks, which were first held in Beijing in late August? The participants in those parleys were the U.S., the DPRK, China as the proactive host, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Three of the participants - the U.S., South Korea and Japan - constitute the core of the KEDO executive board, with the European Union being the other member.

The reason, according to some in the East Asian diplomatic circles, was that Bush did not want the DPRK to treat his offer of "security assurances" as a U.S. climb-down. Not surprisingly, therefore, the KEDO has now played its hand after having soft-pedalled the project since the disclosure, by Kelly himself over a year ago, about North Korea's recourse to the uranium-enrichment route to make atomic weapons in `violation' of the 1994 Agreed Framework (AF). More significantly, in the present context, KEDO has not only blamed Pyongyang but also emphasised that "the future of the project will be assessed and decided by the Executive Board before the expiration of the suspension period [effective December 1]".

JUNG YEON-JE/AFP

Charles Kartman, executive director of KEDO, announcing to reporters in Seoul the decision to suspend work on the power project.

The bottom line is that "the conditions necessary for continuing the LWR project have not been met by the DPRK". The drift of this argument has to be assessed against the reality that Pyongyang had, in the first place, blamed KEDO's perceived lackadaisical ways as a sign of the U.S.' bad faith. From the standpoint of the U.S., its own intelligence findings justified a dim view of the bilateral AF.

The suspension of the LWR project can indeed be seen as a U.S.-orchestrated attempt at subjecting the DPRK to a diplomatic `squeeze' in exactly the same context in which Bush's offer of "security assurances" is being viewed in East Asia as a `sop' or incentive for the DPRK leader, Kim Jong Il. The idea of a diplomatic squeeze of this kind further serves to amplify the scope of the original U.S. game plan of bringing about a strategic `encirclement' of the DPRK through the mechanism of the six-party talks (Frontline, September 26, 2003).

In this heightened environment, a significant fact is that Bush's `sop' for Kim is a goodie promised to be delivered as part of the overall diplomatic dynamics of the talks. While the U.S. remains wary of entering into a bilateral pact with the DPRK on such matters as a no-war deal, the reason being Bush's desire to keep all options on the table, the question is whether the U.S. is not departing from the fine print of the 1994 AF in this regard. Under Section III (1) of the AF, Washington had categorically agreed to "provide formal assurances to the DPRK against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the U.S.".

According to Washington, though, the DPRK had reneged on its AF-related commitments, such as the one to remain a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow inspections under the `safeguards' regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is on the basis of such reasoning that a view has gained currency that Bush might wish to associate all the five acknowledged nuclear powers - the U.S., Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom - with the final settlement of the Korean nuclear issue. The idea is to ensure that these nations will be able to denuclearise North Korea verifiably in the manner in which South Africa had denuclearised in the early 1990s.

All these niceties do not, however, mask the irony of KEDO's action, given especially a flamboyant anecdotal analysis by U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during his visit to South Korea during November 17-18. He said that a satellite imagery atop a table in his Pentagon Office showed the Korean peninsula all lit across the southern part and total darkness, except for a "pinprick of light in Pyongyang" across the DPRK. Why then should KEDO stop work on the power project?

Can this inexplicable attitude be understood in the context of a singular observation by David Kang and others who see the DRPK from the West? It has been said that "North Korea's actions would be the same, whether its fundamental security strategy was offensive or defensive". However, KEDO's action cannot be traced to the related observation that it "is of little value" to produce "a laundry list of reasons why one side or the other (the DPRK and South Korea/the U.S.) is offensive or defensive" in disposition.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail