North Korea: A bomb at the negotiation
table By Donald Kirk
North Korea's sudden agreement to return
to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons reveals
the success of the United States in deploying a
weapon that strikes far more fear among the
country's ruling elite than the specter of a US
"preemptive strike" so often cited in the
rhetoric.
That weapon was the US Treasury
Department's edict of a year ago that blockaded
dealings on US markets with financial firms
accused of serving as conduits for counterfeit
US$100
"supernotes" printed in
Pyongyang on a press imported from Switzerland.
The impact of the Treasury Department ban,
which forced the small Banco Delta Asia in Macau
to freeze $24 million in North Korean accounts,
was amazingly clear in the brief North Korean
acknowledgement of the news that had already
emerged from Beijing. The Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, said the statement, "decided to
return to the six-party talks on the premise that
the issue of lifting financial sanctions will be
discussed and settled between the DPRK and the
US".
So what's going on here? Will these
talks that also include the US, South Korea,
Japan, China and Russia be about counterfeiting -
or nukes? The answer is that North Korea's leaders
must have that money for payoffs among one
another, all presumably at the behest of Dear
Leader Kim Jong-il, as part of the program for
controlling the country's top leadership. The
figures, by the standards of any normal country,
would appear infinitesimally small, but obviously
have a lot to do with manipulation of the levers
of power over mysterious, restive factions.
Thus, during the initial rounds, the chief
US negotiator, Christopher Hill, will be spending
much of his time on the sidelines with his North
Korean counterpart, Kim Gye-gwan, talking about a
topic that Hill has repeatedly said is not his
business but that of the US Treasury.
The
two will disagree at the outset on semantics -
Hill says the "sanctions", as North Korea calls
them, are not sanctions as such but rather
"restrictions" that Pyongyang could avoid very
quickly if it just abided by a few simple rules.
Call them whatever, North Korea, squirming with a
rage that has exceeded the Americans' highest
hopes, has been citing them as the reason for
refusing to return to the talks ever since they
were suspended one year ago.
This was two
months after the signing of the "statement of
principles" on September 19, 2005, under which
North Korea fooled the world into thinking it was
giving up its nukes.
Much though the
Americans may gloat over the sanctions' success,
they also have had a reverse effect that has
vastly escalated the stakes. While professing
fears as always about a US strike, Pyongyang cited
the sanctions as one basic reason for conducting a
nuclear test on October 9, for which it was not
quite prepared.
The test was so small -
one-fifth of a kiloton, compared with the
12.5-kiloton magnitude of the atom bomb dropped on
Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 - that it's likely the
test was a disappointment comparable to that of
the "long-range" Taepodong 2 missile that fizzled
42 seconds after launch on July 4.
Failure
or not, however, North Korea, having agreed to
return to the table, is doing so from what it
perceives as a position of strength powered by the
claim that the test entitles it to full-fledged
membership in the exclusive club of nuclear
powers, with all the negotiating privileges and
perks that membership provides.
Chances
are North Korea won't even enter talks about its
nukes unless the US yields on the sanctions,
possibly after the Treasury Department has
reversed itself and decided, fine, those
blacklisted firms are no longer misbehaving. An
easy explanation for revoking the ban on Banco
Delta Asia, the first and most infamous offender,
would be that it has reformed after going through
reams of records, many of which were on paper, not
computer, and admittedly have taken a long time to
review.
The North Korean nuclear test,
however, has set in motion another process over
which the talks may founder. What about those
sanctions - real sanctions, by any standard -
imposed by the United Nations Security Council
after the nuclear test? On paper, they block any
dealings with North Korea that may support its
nuclear and missile programs, as well as the
export of luxury goods into the country. The
latter is another ploy for frustrating payoffs in
everything from liquor to limousines by which Kim
Jong-il and his aides also bestow favors as needed
to uphold their power.
The fact that China
went along with UN sanctions shows the Chinese
wanted North Korea, as a vassal state dependent on
Chinese aid, to accede to their demands to stop
the nonsense and return to talks. China, however,
blocked a much stronger version of the sanctions,
advocated by Japan, that would have called for
military action. Both China and South Korea
opposed any notion of interdicting vessels moving
in and out of the North. China, moreover, berated
the United States for "inflexibility" - code for
the refusal of the US administration to
compromise.
It's now more certain than
ever that China and South Korea, eager to pursue
their own policy of reconciliation with North
Korea, will firmly ignore suggestions for putting
teeth into the UN sanctions. The most that China
appears ready to do is to hold off, on occasion,
on shipments of oil, the tactic the Chinese
employed in September as a reminder of North
Korea's utter dependence on Chinese largesse.
Seoul, after a year in which inter-Korean
trade set a new record of more than $1 billion,
won't consider anything so drastic as shutting
down South Korean investment in Gaesong or tourism
in the Mount Kumkang region, showpiece zones above
the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas,
despite US claims that much of the money supports
North Korean military programs. Differences
between powers at the talks appear certain to
deepen as China and South Korea align closely on a
relatively gentle approach while the US and Japan
hold out for interdiction as a bargaining tool
ready for use if North Korea refuses to come to
terms.
Japan for now is holding on to its
own sanctions on dealings with North Korea, and
the US may choose to maintain the Treasury
Department's ban on financial firms dealing with
Pyongyang for reasons that have nothing to do with
counterfeiting. The US view is that North Korean
accounts abroad provide refuge for earnings from
the export of weapons and components in clear
violation of UN sanctions.
If nothing
else, however, the North Korean decision to go for
the first six-party talks in a year puts off,
temporarily, the debate about whether the US
should fall for direct bilateral dialogue with
anyone in Pyongyang. Hill and Kim Gye-gwan can
hold separate sessions away from negotiators for
China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, as they were
doing at the talks in Beijing last year, but both
sides can claim to have stuck by their demands.
North Korea will have the direct dialogue
it wants, and the US will have the cover of the
six-party framework that Washington sees as
essential for any deal to mean anything.
The prospect of US and North Korean
negotiators facing each other one-on-one, in
whatever context, engenders false hopes that the
United States and others, notably China, can talk
North Korea into giving up its nukes. At this
stage, the Washington and Pyongyang are at odds on
whether North Korea really is a nuclear power.
Hill, in the seven-hour session in Beijing
in which Kim Gye-gwan acquiesced to renewed
six-party talks, said flatly that North Korea's
test did not give it membership in the club - and
the US would not negotiate on that basis.
The debate over whether North Korea is a
nuclear power, moreover, pales beside the question
of what Pyongyang will ask Washington to do in
return for resigning from the nuclear club, that
is, giving up the program.
Having proved
it's capable of exploding a nuclear device,
however feeble, Pyongyang is sure to press the
case for an outlay of billions on billions of
dollars for construction of nuclear reactors
needed to help fulfill its dire energy needs.
North Korea made that point in September of last
year, signing on to the "statement of principles"
only to demand the next day that the US first make
good on the promise for reactors as specified in
the failed 1994 Geneva framework agreement.
Kim Jong-il no doubt figures he can
reinforce the demand by holding out the threat of
yet another nuclear test if the US does not come
around to a deal that would be even bigger and
better than the 1994 agreement.
If the
talks go nowhere, they have the advantage of
putting off North Korea's rise as a serious
nuclear power capable of much more than detonating
a small device for propaganda purposes. One has to
assume, however, that the talks will break down,
sooner or later, while the US and others come up
with other ways to cope with North Korea's nuclear
ambitions.
Journalist Donald
Kirk has been covering Korea - and the
confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for
more than 30 years. (Copyright 2006 Asia
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