Author: Peter Drysdale

Malcolm Cook at Lowy is exercised over a report last week that there are differences between Washington and Pyongyang on nuclear verification.

That’s perhaps understandable, given his starting point that negotiating with the Norks via the Six Party Talks is a waste of time. But what’s not understandable is the implication in his piece that my endorsement of Ambassador Hill’s and President Bush’s  move to de-list North Korea as a terrorist state as an important step forward towards resumption of the Six Party Talks was any more than that. The context, for those who haven’t followed these things, was a difference over the rights and wrongs of the after-the-event whinge from Tokyo.

Specifically I underlined ongoing thorny issues, a critical one of which is verification:

Establishing some basis for progress on the thorny issues yet to be resolved between Washington and Pyongyang was always the key to a more comprehensive settlement of the Korean problem and Hill has ultimately delivered that despite all the obstacles that have been thrown his way both in Washington, Tokyo, not to mention in Pyongyang.

On the Japan dimension, I echo the argument of informed Japanese analysts, such as Hitoshi Tanaka, who have been urging their countrymen and women to think about the end-game.

There’s a very long way to go on all of this yet. So Malcolm should avoid getting diverted by the games along the way.

Last week there were dialogues in New York between top level North Korean negotiators and their American counterparts and other interlocutors. They included direct talks between Hill and Ri Gun, on which of course there have been no public statements. 

On the side, Don Zagoria chaired a panel with the North Koreans that included the US State Department’s Special Envoy, Sung Kim, former Ambassadors to South Korea Bosworth, Hubbard, and (the especially distinguished) Don Gregg, Ambassadors Stape Roy and Winston Lord, Henry Kissinger, nuclear experts Gary Samore and Lee Sigal, and Senate staffers Frank Jannuzi (Biden) and Keith Luse (Lugar). This is a heavy-hitting group that deals with authority, and with a direct connect to the incoming Obama Administration.

Don has released his summary of that dialogue on The Next Phase of US-DPRK Relations. It is important reading, especially for Australian policymakers who need to get into gear quickly as the Obama Administration takes up the reins unless we are to opt out on a key issue in Asia Pacific security affairs.

Extracts from Report on he Next Phase of US-DPRK Relations

The Issue

One US participant defined the issue in this manner. For the US, the central issue is non-proliferation. If nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, sooner or later they will be used. Therefore there is a strong consensus in the US which goes well beyond the North Korean issue to stop nuclear proliferation. The problem for North Korea, said the American, is not the general issue of proliferation but how to maintain its own security. So it is inevitable that North Korea will want to see steps taken that will enhance its own security in return for giving up nuclear weapons. This is not an unreasonable demand, said the American, even if the US disapproves of particular formulations of this demand.

North Korea’s Choices

A US participant said that North Korea has two choices. It can move towards genuine and final denuclearization or it can procrastinate indefinitely. The danger of North Korea taking the latter course is that the negotiating process will become so controversial that it will become untenable and negotiations will lose their legitimacy.

Another US participant agreed with this assessment and he said that it was necessary to find a road map to complete disarmament while at the same time satisfying North Korean security concerns. The question is: what, if anything, can satisfy those concerns? What is North Korea looking for at this point?

Several North Koreans indicated that the answer to this question was normalization of relations with the US. One DPRK representative reiterated a longstanding DPRK position that North Korea cannot unilaterally abandon nuclear weapons but that if confidence was established with the US, if relations were normalized and if North Korea felt no nuclear threat from the US there would then be no need for even a single nuclear weapon.

Another North Korean participant reiterated this general position by saying that the process of normalization of relations will help denuclearization.  Another North Korean participant stressed the importance of continuity in the next Administration. We waited through the first six years of the Bush Administration before it began to negotiate with North Korea and we don’t want to wait another six years. That, he said, is why we watch carefully every word that Obama says on this issue.

Related articles:

1. An offer Pyongyang could not refuse
2. What’s driving Pyongyang?
3. Is Pyongyang reacting to or shaping events?
4. North Korea’s latest missile launch – Weekly editorial

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 10:00 pm and is filed under International Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.