|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
North Korea I: China Opposes Security Council Action By David McGlinchey “There is no need for the Security Council to take action on this,” said Dingli Shen, a consultant to China’s Defense Ministry and a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. Shen spoke here at an international security conference, hosted by the U.S. Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories. The United States held talks last week with diplomats from China and Pyongyang over the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. At the start of those talks, a North Korean official reportedly told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly that Pyongyang has nuclear weapons and is prepared to test or export them. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker said last week that if Pyongyang foiled the talks, the North Korean issue should be forwarded to the U.N. Security Council. He also suggested that Beijing might support Security Council action (see GSN, April 24). Shen said that within the council there could be “a certain amount of discussion [but] no action is needed.” Throughout the six-month crisis, Washington has pushed for multilateral talks but has also refused to rule out using military force against North Korea. Shen dismissed the possibility of military action. “It will not come to a military conflict,” he said. Talks Not a Failure The North Korean nuclear weapons claim may have caused the first round of talks to end on a sour note, but the negotiations were not a failure, according to Shen. “That depends on the definition. Nobody would expect a breakthrough in the first meeting so it was not a failure,” he told Global Security Newswire. Shen was asked what comes next for Washington and Pyongyang. “We hope they continue to talk, [we want] continued talks between the D.P.R.K. and the U.S.,” he said. Clay Moltz, director of the Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies, cautiously agreed. “It’s not a failure, but it certainly wasn’t a success,” Moltz said. He suggested that neither North Korea nor the United States put their best foot forward in the talks. Kelly was the top U.S. official in Pyongyang last October when the United States leveled the nuclear accusations against Pyongyang. The two sides have not had an official diplomatic meeting since (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2002). “North Korea obviously sent a less than high-level official. The U.S. sent a guy who had some baggage in North Korea’s eyes,” Moltz said, suggesting that Washington send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the next meeting. Powell has often adopted a more moderate position than other Bush administration officials. Officials need to “rethink the team that attends, on both sides,” Moltz said, but he cautioned that “any negotiation with North Korea is bound to be prolonged.” Nuclear Claim Doubted Several officials, including Moltz, doubted that North Korea would make the world aware of its nuclear weapons stockpile in such an understated manner. Moltz suggested that Pyongyang was trying to intimidate the United States to begin talks but he said the North Korean rhetoric could moderate if talks continue. “They might have been trying to look as big and bad as possible … some of this may have been trash talk,” he said.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
