New US push to isolate North Korea

The deployment last week of 15 stealth fighters to South Korea, along with the severing of the US military's only official interaction with North Korea, appears to be part of a new push by the Bush administration to further isolate Pyongyang despite China's hesitation to join the effort. ...

In a change that reflects a failure of the present policy, some officials say they will no longer rely heavily on China to sway the North Koreans. Senior officials say they now realize that China may never be willing to use its leverage over Pyongyang.

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Vice President Dick Cheney, however, called on China to help stalled talks with North Korea. "China can have a huge impact here, because they've got more extensive economic relationships with the North than anybody else," Mr. Cheney said in an interview broadcast Monday night on CNN's "Larry King Live" ( see transcript). "It's incumbent upon them to be major players here."

In that interview, Cheney launched what the Telegraph calls a " tirade" against Kim Jong Il. Cheney called Kim "one of the world's more irresponsible leaders," called North Korea "a police state," and accused Kim of maintaining one of the most heavily militarized societies in the world. He also said most North Koreans lived "in abject poverty and stages of malnutrition."

The International Herald Tribune reports that North Korea called the deployment of US aircraft a prelude to war, and that the state-run Pyongyang Radio compared US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to a dog "that has no fear of a tiger and barks at it."

According to the Herald, "some analysts in Seoul have begun to recognize that both North Korea and China may have interests in prolonging the crisis ... rather than settling it."

The Times reports that Ms. Rice will present to foreign diplomats Tuesday details of efforts to intercept weapons and missile technology bound for Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

The timing of the presentation is significant because Mr. Bush's aides, in conversations where they insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, are talking with increasing urgency about using similar techniques to cut off North Korea's main sources of hard currency: shipments of weapons, illegal drugs and counterfeit currency.

Steve Andreasen, director for defense policy and arms control on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, writes that the Bush administration's approach to North Korea "might be called passive appeasement."

As for the US diplomatic response, it might best be described as asleep at the wheel. ... Because of a lack of assertive diplomacy, the most isolated, dangerous regime on the globe has been permitted to increase its nuclear inventory.

Only now – when North Korea appears ready to stage a nuclear test – is the administration considering establishing its own red line, backed by threats of negative consequences. But bilateral negotiations with the North apparently remain off the table.

There are a few reasons why North Korea is unlikely to conduct a nuclear test, however, according to Christopher Torchia, Seoul bureau chief for The Associated Press from 1999 until last year. Kim "seems willing to wait out, or wear down, his adversaries," writes to Mr. Torchia.

A nuclear test, however, would inflame the standoff and possibly alienate China, North Korea's last ally.

... A test would strengthen the hand of hardliners in Japan, where animosity toward the North is high because of the lack of progress on Japan's demands for more information about Japanese citizens kidnapped by the communist country decades ago.

... A test would confirm North Korea's status as a nuclear power, but the political gains are unclear. One of Kim Jong-il's few bargaining chips is the mystery surrounding his nuclear activities, a source of anxiety and bewilderment in capitals around the world.

The Bush administration, whose preoccupation with the Iraq war has distracted it from the North Korean crisis, has effectively allowed North Korea to continue its nuclear-weapons development.

With China and Russia, as well as South Korea, becoming increasingly reluctant to apply diplomatic pressure or impose economic sanctions on the North, America has found itself unable to take the initiative at six-party meetings. Pyongyang has, for all practical purposes, taken advantage of this situation.

Issues surrounding North Korea's nuclear program are likely to be discussed this weekend when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and regional defense ministers meet at the Asia Security Conference, an annual forum in Singapore.

In a keynote speech at the forum, South Korean Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung will deliver South Korea's stance on weapons of mass destruction, the defense ministry in Seoul said.

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