Global Security Newswire

North Korea appears intent on retaining its nuclear weapons, but its recent signs of openness are a sign of the success of U.N. sanctions, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said today (see GSN, Sept. 14).

"It appears to be true that North Korea is fairly embarrassed because of greater than expected real effects" of the economic penalties, Lee told the Kyodo and Yonhap news agencies.

"North Korea is using some conciliatory strategy toward the United States, South Korea and Japan in order to get out of this crisis, but for now, North Korea is not showing any sincerity or sign that it will give up nuclear weapons," he added, according to the Associated Press.

The U.N. Security Council hit Pyongyang with heightened economic penalties -- including a call for interdiction of North Korean ships suspected of carrying illicit cargo -- after the regime conducted its second-ever nuclear test in May. The North by then had declared it was finished with six-nation talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear operations, threatening to resume operations at its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear complex.

More recently, though, North Korea has offered signs that it is amenable to further talks. It released U.S. and South Korean detainees and invited top envoys from Washington to visit Pyongyang. The Obama administration this week said it was open to direct talks as a means of resuming the full six-party process, which also involves China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

The North seemingly hopes to "receive economic cooperation while trying to buy time to make it a fait accompli" for retention of its nuclear arsenal, Lee said. He said the other six-party talks nations should "redouble efforts" to eliminate the North Korean nuclear stockpile (Jae-Soon Chang, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 15).

Extensive U.S.-North Korean dialogue would occur only alongside the six-party talks, the State Department said yesterday.

"What we've said all along is that we will not have any substantial bilateral talks with North Korea that's outside of the six-party context, that our goal is to get North Korea to return to the six-party context," said spokesman Ian Kelly (Kyodo News/Breitbart.com, Sept. 14).