Pyongyang tells Japan talks on hold until Bush changes policies.
By Jim Bencivenga | csmonitor.com
Japanese and North Korean officials began a third round of talks in Pyongyang Wednesday over the fate of 13 Japanese citizens abducted decades ago by North Korean spies, reports The China Post.
The communist country has admitted to the kidnappings. It released five Japanese in 2002 and claimed eight others had died.
Japan wants details on the fate of its citizens and has made resolution of the issue a condition for establishing ties and providing economic aid, reports Bloomberg.
Japanese lawmakers this year approved measures that allow the government to impose economic sanctions on North Korea, including a halt to remittances to the country. Money transfers by Korean residents in Japan are among North Korea's biggest sources of foreign currency.
But as emotionally charged as these kidnapping negotiations are, they serve as a sideshow to the bigger issue of the rogue regime's nuclear arms program and the six-party talks (between China, Russia, North and South Korea, Japan and the United States) which were put on hold until the outcome of the US presidential elections, reports the BBC.
Reuters reports that on Thursday, in a digression from the kidnapping issues, North Korea told the Japanese they were not willing to reopen discussions about a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
Japan's top government spokesman said North Korean officials told their Japanese counterparts that Pyongyang was not keen to resume the multilateral forum anytime soon.
North Korea said an early resumption of six-party talks on its nuclear arms program will be difficult, and it wants to see how President Bush deals with Pyongyang following his re-election.
To date, there have been three rounds of six-party talks, aimed at pressuring Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear weapons ambitions. North Korea refused to attend a fourth in September.
North Korea says it has nuclear weapons and is working on building up its arsenal, reports the BBC.
Experts believe the North has already extracted enough plutonium for six or seven atomic bombs, although this is difficult to verify as North Korea will not submit to inspections from the UN's nuclear agency.
Earlier this week, Russia called for resumption of the six-way talks, saying "it was the only way of resolving Pyongyang's standoff with Washington," reports Agency France Press.
Russia further urged China, which hosts the talks, to agree to a date for the fourth round of negotiations "in the nearest future."
Russia has sought to emphasize its role as a major regional power by participating in the multinational talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Moscow held major sway over North Korea in the Soviet era, but it has largely bowed out from the peninsula since communism's collapse, with most of its trade with Pyongyang switching hands to China.
For its part, at least in the final months leading up to the election, the Bush administration was prepared to let China and South Korea apply pressure on North Korea, writes Daniel Sneider, a foreign-affairs columnist for the Mercury News.
Both countries retain key leverage over the North as suppliers of energy, food and other aid to its failed economy.
There have been tensions in the past between Washington, Seoul, and Beijing over how to handle the talks. The two Asian countries have consistently urged a more flexible approach. But officials in all three capitals agree that cooperation is close these days. Seoul and Washington, in particular, are working together much better than in the past.
However, if push comes to shove and the need for UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea are called for by the US, China would balk, writes Sneider.
... for Beijing stability and avoiding war on the Korean Peninsula are the key, rather than stopping nuclear proliferation. If the Chinese have to swallow a nuclear North Korean to avoid war, they will do it.
Prior to the US presidential elections, Nicholas Eberstadt of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, offered a different approach to negotiating with North Korea, reports China Daily.
There should be a greater emphasis on human rights abuses and increased economic pressures on Pyongyang, including interdicting shipments of heroin and counterfeit dollars that finance the communist regime.
China Daily cites an unnamed US congressional source saying that Bush is expected to raise the trafficking issue when he meets South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Santiago, Chile, on Nov. 19-20.
Experts note that scores of North Korean ships dock at South Korean ports every year.
South Korea for its part, remains hopeful that the Bush administration will soften its approach to North Korean nuclear proliferation, reports the World Peace Herald.
In a congratulatory message, Mr. Roh said his government "wholeheartedly welcomes the re-election of incumbent President Bush" and the World Peace Herald cites Chung Woo-seong, senior presidential adviser on foreign affairs, as saying that
Roh intends to use planned summit talks with Bush later this month to closely discuss ways to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue peacefully.
In a column, The Providence Journal's associate editor Philip Terzian, reminds readers that both Bush and Sen. John Kerry debated the issue of a nuclear North Korea.
Bush defended his reliance on multilateral talks with North Korea while Senator Kerry insisted that the United States should approach North Korea unilaterally.
Both candidates explained the logic of their position, but neither addressed the underlying problem at stake: what to do about North Korea's nuclear program.
... For while we may argue indefinitely about the merits of negotiating one-on-one with North Korea, or approaching Pyongyang as part of a united front, both roads lead to the same destination. At some point, if North Korea fails to respond to diplomacy, what will the United States, or anyone, do about it?
Last month, when there was heightened concern about a North Korean missile test, a US destroyer began patrolling the Sea of Japan as a means of assurance for Japan.
The North Korean reaction, according to the Associated Press, writes Mr. Terzian was "devoid of nuance." North Korea said:
The United States should clearly understand that a preemptive attack is not its monopoly.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1111/dailyUpdate.html