UN washes its hands of Cheonan affair
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - Credit diplomacy with having averted a showdown on the Korean
Peninsula that nobody wanted. The North Koreans were threatening "all-out war"
in late May if the United Nations Security Council condemned the North for
sinking the South Korean navy corvette the Cheonan in March, and have
claimed "a great diplomatic victory" in the form of the meaningless statement
that emerged last week.
It's as though the purpose of the UN statement, a model of appeasement, were to
exonerate the North Koreans for the attack and persuade all other powers in the
region to forget it. Now the question is whether the United States, China and
the two Koreas can put the Cheonan episode behind them and get on with
the
quest for inter-Korean reconciliation and an end to the North's nuclear
program.
The first test of the impact of this approach will be the joint military
exercises that the South Koreans and Americans have been talking about since
South Korea concluded a lengthy investigation on May 20 that blamed a North
Korean midget submarine for firing the torpedo that split the Cheonan in
two on March 26, with the loss of 46 lives.
South Korea's Ministry of National Defense has been saying for weeks that the
US would join in anti-submarine exercises in the West or Yellow Sea, and there
have even been reports that the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George
Washington will lead the flotilla. The commander of US forces in Korea
General, Walter Sharp, has confirmed the exercises are going to happen, but now
both South Korea and the US are hesitating in the face of strong Chinese
concerns about such a show of force in waters so close to the Chinese mainland.
Now the South Koreans are saying they might prefer to stage the exercises south
of the Korean Peninsula, and the Americans are silent on whether the carrier George
Washington will participate. It's also not at all clear how long the
exercises will last or exactly what the Americans and South Koreans will be
doing out there. Options range from largely computerized war games to all-out
live-fire missions against dummy targets in a display for international media.
No matter where they stage the exercises, the Americans and South Koreans are
not going to go near the waters where the Cheonan went down. That was
close to the Northern Limit Line, the marker drawn on maps by the UN Command in
Seoul after the Korean War (1950-1953), below which North Korean ships are
banned. North Korea refuses to recognize the line - and has threatened more
attacks in the area, the scene of bloody battles in June 1999 and again in June
2002.
North Korea now is blasting the prospect of US-South Korea war games in
vitriolic language similar to its threats before the UN Security Council came
out with its statement. United States and South Korean officials are caught in
a dilemma in which they do not want to appear to have been intimidated into
backing down on holding exercises but also do not want to provoke another
incident.
United States officials are convinced the UN statement was cleverly worded to
suggest North Korea was responsible for the attack while avoiding language
which would only inflame tensions. The statement noted that five nations
participated in the investigation in which North Korea was held "responsible
for sinking the Cheonan" that North Korea had stated "it had nothing to
do with the incident" and that "therefore the Security Council condemns the
attack which led to the sinking of the Cheonan".
The critical point, however, was that the statement fell far short of the
"resolution" condemning North Korea that South Korea had wanted. With the
danger of condemnation safely averted, North Korea is now moving quickly to
follow up on this success on two other fronts.
First, North Korea is saying it would indeed welcome "six-party talks on an
equal footing" in order to bring about denuclearization of the Korean peninsula
and a peace treaty in place of the armistice ending the Korean War. The
six-party talks include the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the US.
The statement indicates that North Korea would indeed consider returning to
six-party talks on its nuclear program, which were last held in Beijing in
December 2008.
It also suggests that nothing much has changed - that is, that North Korea will
demand recognition as a nuclear power, on the basis of tests it conducted in
October 2006 and again in May of last year. At the same time, North Korea will
demand huge compensation in return for making a show of giving up its nukes - a
process that's sure to revive memories of the failed 1994 Geneva agreement with
the US and the six-nation agreements of 2007 under which the North agreed on
specific timetables for doing away with its nukes.
The UN statement is sure to provide ammunition for North Korean diplomatic
moves, beginning with discussions that Pyongyang is reportedly requesting with
the United Nations command at the truce village of Panmunjom under terms of the
armistice. Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, said North Korea is asking for
talks there about the Cheonan incident.
That report is consistent with North Korea's claim, as reported by the North's
Korean Central News Agency, that the Cheonan case "should have been
settled between the North and the South without referring it to the UN".
One thing is certain, however. North Korea is not going to use the talks at the
Panmunjom forum to make any dramatic concessions or admissions of
responsibility for sinking the Cheonan. The UN statement, as the North
Korean report duly noted, was "devoid of any proper judgement and conclusion" -
and made "without adopting any resolution".
North Korea is moving ahead on diplomacy with the confidence that China is
firmly on its side - and sure to become more so as tensions increase in the
region. The US, meanwhile, is counting on the Chinese to keep the North Koreans
under control while bringing about a return to six-party talks.
It's as though the great powers with the most influence on their Korean
surrogates have come to an understanding in which the US is telling the South
Koreans, the Cheonan sinking was too bad, now let's get over it.
Chinese professors were full of rationalizations and explanations. "China and
the US will try to avoid any eruption or elevation of crisis," said Zhang
Quanyi, a professor at Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo, eastern China, as
quoted by Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. "The current psychological
confrontation is only a tension on the surface." The two, he said, "will work
to have more strategic cooperation."
In the face of Chinese nervousness about joint exercises, Kim Mikyung, a
professor at Hiroshima City University in Japan was quoted as saying, "Both
sides know that they also have to work together."
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