Rice arrives to a tense north Asia

Weeks after North Korea pulled out of six-nation talks and claimed it has nuclear weapons, the new US top diplomat is coming to town.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives Friday in Tokyo at a time when many Asia experts describe an unusual rise in political tensions, old animosities, and nationalism in this part of the world - despite good economic performances by China, South Korea, and Japan. They even point to a sense of "drift" in US-Asian relations.

A chief difficulty for the traveling US chief diplomat, though one kept at low profile, is how to handle North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Whether Secretary Rice can muster the leverage and skill to restart the moribund six-party talks on Korea is unclear, as indeed is the viability of the US position, some experts say. Washington insists that North Korea must agree to completely dismantle its weapons as a starting position.

Since the Kim regime declared it has nuclear weapons, Rice has steadily argued that North Korea is further isolating itself, and that the US has "agreement with five partners," as she states.

Yet when the new Secretary visits Seoul and Beijing on Saturday and Sunday, she may find the US position is also isolated. Following Kim's claim of nuclear status, neither South Korea nor China has taken any visible punitive steps against the regime, which is considered a major human rights violator. Instead, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon this week urged the US to seek more "creative" measures to break the impasse. China's foreign minister days ago stated he doubts that US intelligence on North Korea's weapons of mass destruction is accurate.

"If Kim goes for nuclear weapons he can begin to reduce his costly need for a huge army," says Alexandre Mansourov of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. "I'm not convinced he's coming back to the six-party talks. The North likes having nuclear credentials."

As Rice arrives, regional contretemps are so heated that it appears little effort has gone into traditional efforts to "create an atmosphere" for her visit.

In the past week, Japan has informally claimed several small islands that South Korea now occupies. This was supposed to be a "year of friendship" between Korea and Japan. Yet this week, South Korean F-16 fighter jets cruised over the tiny Pacific outcroppings, which Japan calls Takeshima, and Korea called Tokdo.

Of course, the bigger island dispute in the region is over Taiwan. On Monday, China's National People's Congress passed an antisecession bill that offers a legal rationale for the takeover of Taiwan. Thursday, Taiwan's president Chen Shui-bian called for mass protests.

The ongoing tensions over Taiwan prompted the US and Japan to declare last month a shared mutual security goal "to encourage the peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait through dialogue." China criticized the joint statement as meddling in its internal affairs.

Page: 1 | 2