World>Terrorism & Security
posted June 23, 2004, updated 1:14 p.m.

Negotiation or appeasement?

US tries 'kinder, gentler' approach to a nuclear-free North Korea.

by Matthew Clark | csmonitor.com

As South Korea collectively mourns the beheading of one of its citizens in Iraq, its nuclear neighbor to the north will have to consider a fresh offer from the United States.

At six-nation talks in Beijing, the US proposed giving North Korea energy aid and a security guarantee in exchange for ending its nuclear program, reports the Associated Press.

Under the proposal, the North would have to begin dismantling work after a three-month preparatory stage, said the officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. ... The proposal does not include details such as a timeline of what benefits the North might receive for each stage of the process, the officials said. Those would have to be negotiated later, [the officials] said.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that "the White House initiative seems to suggest a tactically kinder and gentler approach to the hard-core Stalinist regime," which "came about partly from a sense among US officials that Washington was wrongly being framed as the hostile or intractable actor in the talks."

The New York Times reported Tuesday that President Bush authorized US negotiators to offer North Korea the "new but highly conditional set of incentives." The Times points out that this process would be similar to what Libya committed to in December 2003, and "the first significant, detailed overture to North Korea since Mr. Bush took office three years ago."


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"North Korea appeared poised to consider a US offer," reports the BBC. But what US officials are calling "preparatory period of dismantlement," according the Times report, North Korean officials are calling a "freeze".

Chief North Korean delegate Kim Kye-gwan said in opening remarks at the talks:

With regard to the freeze for corresponding measures, my delegation expects to hear new ideas from the US side. ... Our nuclear policy is the offspring of the US hostile policy. ... But we don't expect to keep our nuclear weapons forever, nor do we intend to attack the US. ... Our goal is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula - to make the peninsula free of nuclear weapons.

The new move is a significant policy shift for the Bush administration, which has previously insisted on the complete, verifiable dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program before any rewards are promised. In an example of the standard Bush administration line, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker told reporters at a briefing last December that the US " will not give in to blackmail."

"The international community will not enter into dialogue in response to threats or broken commitments, and we're not going to bargain or offer inducements for North Korea to live up to the treaties and agreements that it has signed," he said.

This change in course comes at a time when the Bush administration faces increased pressure from South Korea, China, Russia, presumptive Democratic nominee for president, John Kerry, and former US diplomats to make some progress in negotiations with North Korea.

The Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday that China and South Korea were expected to "break ranks [with the US position], join forces, and politely challenge the practicality of American insistence on CVID" - complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement - of all nuclear activity before talking about the loans, aid, and security guarantees that North Korea hopes to secure.

Ambassador Robert Gallucci, the architect of the Clinton administration's policy towards North Korea reportedly told the BBC that "the current US approach to Pyongyang is going nowhere."

In a Washington Post report last month Mr. Kerry accused the administration of having no plan to deal with North Korea. "He derided the Bush administration's long effort to set up six-nation talks to resolve the impasse over North Korea's nuclear ambitions as a 'fig leaf' designed to cover up its failure to have a coherent policy," according to the report.

Of the six nations involved in the Beijing talks, - North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the US - Japan is most closely aligned with the hardline US position. But editorials in Japanese newspapers have been calling on the US to soften its tone in this third round of talks. An editorial in the Asahi Shimbun daily asserts that the US should be more "flexible".

[The US] should propose a step-by-step process to encourage North Korea by rewarding its positive acts with benefits it seeks, such as guarantees of the regime's safety and economic aid. The Bush administration's obstinate refusal to adopt a flexible approach is partly why the six-nation process has stagnated.

The BBC also reports that analysts say it is "highly possible that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will want to stall on any deal until after the US elections in November, in the hope that President Bush will lose office." The Los Angeles Times reports that US and North Korean diplomats "remain fundamentally distracted by the upcoming US presidential election."

The lack of urgency is frustrating to the other parties involved in the talks – China, South Korea, Japan and Russia – who, as North Korea's closest neighbors, want an end to the uncertainty.

Making any concessions to North Korea is likely to disappoint many hawks in Washington, who assert that Kim's regime should not be appeased. In an opinion piece published in TIME Asia last week, Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute compared the North Korea talks to " conference diplomacy" used by European powers in the 1920s and '30s. Back then, writes Mr. Eberstadt:

Each new round of talks was hailed as a success, with the antagonists' willingness to sit at the same table held out as proof that conference diplomacy was working. But without giving away the conclusion, we can tell audiences that the tale of conference diplomacy was not a story with a happy ending. ... Today, the appeasers show no signs of awakening from their slumber or shedding their illusions.

Former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, agrees that North Korea should not receive concessions in an opinion piece that appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post.

Now is the time for the democratic countries of the world - European Union members, the United States, Japan, South Korea - to take a common position. They must make it clear that they will not offer concessions to a totalitarian dictator. ... Decisiveness, perseverance, and negotiations from a position of strength are the only things that Kim Jong Il and those like him understand.