July 29, 2000	atimes.com

The Koreas Paek is life and soul of the forum By Mahesh Uniyal BANGKOK - North Korea's first major interaction with the world community Thursday, through its first-ever participation at the Asia-Pacific security forum, has further thawed its decades-long isolation. Thursday's diplomacy came after another first for North and South Korea. The day before, the two countries held their first bilateral meeting between foreign ministers since the Korean Peninsula was partitioned after the Korean War in 1950-53. Emerging from the bilateral talks on the sidelines of the Asean Regional Forum (ARF), North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun and his South Korean counterpart, Lee Joung-binn, declared that the two sides had agreed to work together to help Pyongyang become a normal member of the international community. Paek's attendance at the 23-nation forum was North Korea's first major interaction with the world community and overshadowed other pressing concerns. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the 13 others - Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, the two Koreas, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Russia and the United States - noted that Pyongyang's emergence from isolation had accelerated at the ARF meeting. South Korea, for its part, is eager to give a push to North Korea's bid to emerge from isolation, senior South Korean officials said. Seoul believes that it is especially important for the country to normalize ties with Tokyo and Washington, which along with China have been trying to get the two Koreas to talk to each other and make peace for many years. ''To establish peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula, it would help if North Korea established diplomatic relations with the United States and Japan,'' a South Korean spokesman said. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, whose arrival was delayed by the Middle East summit in the US, was due to meet Paek in Bangkok Friday. This would be the first meeting between a US secretary of state and a North Korean foreign minister. Foreign ministers at the ARF gathering expressed satisfaction at the fact that North Korea had shown its willingness to behave as a responsible nation by temporarily refraining from missile tests that had unnerved Japan and the United States. In 1998, North Korea tested a missile that crossed Japanese territory and has since worried Tokyo. The ARF nations saw last month's inter-Korean summit as a ''turning point'' in inter-Korean relations, said a statement issued by the forum's chair, Thailand. They ''were of the view that the ongoing momentum of dialogue and interaction [between North Korea and the rest of the world] would be carried forward with a view to achieving lasting peace and eventual reunification on the Korean Peninsula''. During their meeting, the two Korean ministers also agreed that the ''historic summit'' between the once-reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, was a ''milestone in realizing peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula''. Both sides took trouble to emphasize that this was not mere diplomatic rhetoric but that they meant business. ''I was very satisfied,'' a beaming Paek told reporters coming out of the 40-minute talks with the South Korean foreign minister. South Korean spokesman Choi Young Kin pointed out that since the Bangkok talks were the first since the Korean Peninsula's partition half a century ago, ''we proceeded without a set agenda''. However, he asserted that the bilateral meeting was only an ''exchange of views and not a negotiation [on political differences]''. South Korea's keenness not to play up differences with its former adversary was evident. Choi admitted that ''we did mention'' North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile program. But he hastened to add: ''This meeting was about an exchange of views and not about negotiations. I will not go into details.'' This was perhaps why the two sides did not discuss the US plan for a missile defense umbrella for North Asia - which Washington says it needs to counter attacks by ''states of concern'' such as North Korea. North Korea, however, did take this up in one of the series of bilateral meetings Paek held with ARF members on the sidelines. In his meeting Thursday morning with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, Paek reportedly quipped that the US excuse citing North Korean missiles for the theater missile defense system was like a thief calling another thief a thief. US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott was quoted in media reports Thursday as saying that he would seek clarification from Pyongyang on its declared moratorium on missile tests. US President Bill Clinton has expressed skepticism over North Korea's offer to stop missile tests in return for Western help in launching satellites - a position Pyongyang relayed to Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month. The ARF, however, ''expressed the hope for further positive developments regarding the temporary moratorium by the DPRK (North Korea) on missile test launches'', the statement by the forum chairman said. The ARF also expressed its concern over the US plan for theater missile defense. Briefing reporters on the ARF session, Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan said: ''No one spoke in support of it . . . The American representative [at the ARF] agreed to carry back the sentiments" of the ARF back to Washington." However, it was obvious that North Korean missile issues would not deter most Asia-Pacific nations from putting the past behind and getting closer to Pyongyang. Among those queuing up is Japan, which has announced a meeting August 21-25 in Tokyo to follow up Paek's talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono in Bangkok on Wednesday. A joint statement issued after the meeting said that Pyongyang and Tokyo had agreed to settle past differences and seek a ''good-neighborly and friendly relationship''. North Korea expressed its eagerness to meet to meet more and more countries, and South Korea also wants North Korea to ''increase its participation in international organizations'' like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the Asean-Europe Meeting, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, the South Korean spokesman said. (Inter Press Service)

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