Michael Richardson: Patience with North Korea wearing thin

Meeting at the White House in Washington this month, United States President George W. Bush and his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo Hyun, sought to paper over differences in strategy on North Korea and present a common front at a critical point in dealing with Pyongyang.

Both leaders said that the alliance between their two countries was "strong" and agreed to continue to work closely together to de-nuclearise the Korean Peninsula. But the US is growing impatient with North Korean stalling.

It is a year this month since the last round of the six-party talks were held in an effort to induce Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons programme. Now, the US is ratcheting up the pressure not just on North Korea - which in February declared that it had nuclear arms - but also on South Korea and China.

The top US diplomat for Asian and Pacific affairs, Christopher Hill, told Congress last week that China "can and should do more" to induce Pyongyang to return to negotiations.

Beijing hosts the six-party talks. Apart from China and the two Koreas, the other participants are the US, Japan and Russia. In the last round of negotiations, in June 2004, Washington offered Pyongyang multilateral security assurances, as well as economic, energy and diplomatic benefits that would be given in phases as North Korea dismantled all parts of its nuclear weapons arsenal and programme.

Pyongyang has yet to reply formally to that offer. Still, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a visiting South Korean minister on Friday that North Korea would return to the talks hosted by China, possibly next month, if the United States "recognises and respects" his country. However, the Bush Administration immediately dismissed this conditional offer as "more rhetoric", saying that only substantive negotiations in the six-party forum could result in real progress.

Despite the more promising climate of recent days, there are deep divisions between South Korea and China on the one side and the US and its other Northeast Asian ally, Japan, on the other over the question of how best to handle North Korea. Unless carefully managed and held in check, these differing interests may give Pyongyang still more time to increase the size and improve the sophistication of its atomic arsenal.

This may already include several usable weapons, with the capability to increase the stockpile to about a dozen over the next year or two.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told an Asian security conference in Singapore this month that Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions "threaten the security and stability of the region, and because of their record of proliferation, it threatens the world". He said that given North Korea's record in selling ballistic missile technologies, as well as trafficking in illegal drugs and counterfeit currency, "one has to assume that they will sell anything and that they would be willing to sell nuclear technologies". Washington worries that some may end up in the hands of terrorists hostile to the US.

Shortly after Rumsfeld spoke, a senior Pentagon official said that if the diplomatic talks did not make adequate progress soon, the Bush Administration would probably decide in the next few weeks whether to take the North Korean issue to the United Nations Security Council.

Bush assured Roh that he wanted a diplomatic solution. But he has been careful to leave open the possibility of applying various forms of pressure on North Korea, saying that all options are on the table.

Tokyo, too, is losing patience with Pyongyang. Japan's Minister of State for Defence Yoshinori Ono said that Japanese opinion was shifting towards imposing economic sanctions on North Korea or bringing the matter to the UN.

Both China and South Korea oppose such moves and are likely to continue doing so, unless the North carries out a nuclear weapons test.

South Korean Defence Minister Yoon Kwang Ung said in Singapore that Seoul should be given more time to persuade Pyongyang to return to negotiations. He expressed optimism the two Koreas can agree on a way to resume the six-party talks.

China and South Korea have aid levers and other influence they could use to increase the pressure on North Korea to return to the talks. But as immediate neighbours of the North, China and South Korea fear destabilising consequences from forcing the issue. As one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China could veto any US-led move to impose UN sanctions on North Korea.

The consequences of UN sanctions might include a possible Northern reprisal attack on the South, a famine-induced mass refugee exodus from the North that would spill into China, or even regime collapse with all its costs and strategic uncertainties. Pyongyang has repeatedly warned that it would treat any form of sanctions as an act of war and respond accordingly.

Beijing and Seoul have in the past suggested that Washington should offer Pyongyang a more attractive package of economic incentives and security guarantees to help bring about a North Korean change of heart. But the US wants to be sure that North Korea will dismantle its nuclear weapons before offering more inducements.

One alternative the Bush Administration is reportedly considering is a crackdown on the North's exports of missiles, drugs and counterfeit currency that are financing the nuclear programme.

But without Chinese and South Korean co-operation in intercepting shipments at sea, on land or in the air, this kind of blockade is unlikely to be effective and might simply serve to provoke Pyongyang.

* Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.