Clark focuses on peace in a nuclear tinderbox

By HELEN TUNNAH

Angry rhetoric from North Korea has ratcheted up international tensions as Prime Minister Helen Clark visits the peninsula for commemorations to mark the end of the Korean War.

The nuclear crisis swirling around North Korea, and the United States' aggressive stance towards it, will dominate talks between the Prime Minister and South Korea's President Roh Moo-Hyun in Seoul today.

She will also get a closer look at one of the physical barriers to reunification, and potential flashpoints, when she visits the heavily guarded border between the two Koreas on Sunday.

Helen Clark has travelled to South Korea with a party of New Zealand Korean War veterans for a series of international ceremonies marking the armistice informally ending the 1950-1953 war in which four million civilians and soldiers were killed.

Thirty-three New Zealanders died in the fighting.

North Korea this week labelled commemoration plans a "dangerous act", just days after gunfire was exchanged between guards along the border, and as the northern state moved in heavy artillery.

Its leaders turned down an invitation to the services, expected to attract up to 5000 veterans.

The international community has eyed North Korea nervously for nine months, after its revelation last October that it had nuclear capabilities, contravening a series of treaties under which the regime had promised not to develop nuclear weaponry.

The admission, before the Gulf War but after United States President George Bush branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" alongside Iraq and Iran, has been met with international condemnation.

However, there are also concerns the weak and suspicious North Korean regime fears it has been backed into a corner by a powerful and aggressive enemy.

North Korea's leaders have agreed to bilateral talks to defuse the crisis, but only if the US first swears to a non-aggression pact. The Americans have rejected that, and want China and Japan, and possibly South Korea, included in talks.

Neighbours Japan and China wait nervously, wanting neither a nuclear armed Korean peninsula, nor a collapsed North Korean regime.

That would only serve to send hundreds of thousands of economic and political refugees across the border into China, while any later restructuring would suck massive investment capital from their economies. Hardliners in Japan are even now considering whether they should also embark on a nuclear programme, citing security worries.

While President Roh is adamant the crisis must be resolved through dialogue and negotiation, South Korea's own role may be hamstrung by a US Administration reluctant to weaken its military clout in the republic, where it has 37,000 troops.

With the Korean War armistice reflecting only a ceasefire to the end of the conflict, China is endorsing a formal end to the war, a position expected to be backed this weekend by Helen Clark.

New Zealand's stance will be to support the efforts of President Roh to embrace the North Korean leadership through his "peace and prosperity" unification policy.

Helen Clark's talks follow meetings in recent weeks between Mr Roh and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

The South Korean President has also travelled to Japan and China for talks on North Korea.

New Zealand has been touted as one country with the potential to help broker peace on the peninsula, because of its historical and economic ties with South Korea, although the US might not welcome such involvement.

Those close links between New Zealand and South Korea were forged during the war, and then in trade relationships.

The republic is now New Zealand's sixth biggest trading partner and the market is worth $1.3 billion a year.

It also remains a growing tourism and education market.