One week after North Korea defiantly launched a rocket, the US is working on a delicate balance between condemning the communist state and nudging it back to dialogue.
The US, backed by Japan and South Korea, wants the UN Security Council to send a strong message to North Korea. A draft statement calling for new sanctions against Pyongyang was agreed to on Saturday by five permanent members of the council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — plus Japan, and was to be submitted to the full council today.
The UN push risks provoking North Korea, which had warned that even discussion by the Security Council of its rocket test — seen in Pyongyang as a satellite launch — would lead it to bolt the already deadlocked six-nation disarmament talks.
The new administration of US President Barack Obama has been unequivocal that it seeks to resume six-nation talks — and North Korea has so far been silent on whether it would carry out its threats to quit the dialogue.
Two days ahead of the widely expected launch, Stephen Bosworth, the US special envoy on North Korea, said that the six-way talks — involving China, the US, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan — should resume within a “reasonable” time frame.
“We will be working very close with our partners to ensure that after the dust of the missile settles a bit, we get back to the longer-term priority of the six-party talks,” Bosworth said.
Analysts said the Obama team was mindful of the lessons under former US president George W. Bush, who branded North Korea part of an “axis of evil” before eventually entering the six-way talks.
In its first years, the Bush administration saw the failure of trying to deliberately ignore Pyongyang, said Scott Snyder, director of the Asia Foundation’s Center for US-Korea Policy.
“The North Koreans don’t abide neglect,” Snyder said. “They will make demands in one way or another — through further escalation, possibly further missile tests — to draw the attention of the international community.”
Snyder said the key was “letting the North Koreans know that the only way out there available to them is the one that has been offered” — talks backed by “the collective will of regional players involved in the six-party talks.”
North Korea tested a nuclear bomb in 2006 and one year later reached a six-country deal on aid in exchange for denuclearization, which soon stalled because of disputes over how to verify Pyongyang was carrying out its promises.
Pyongyang has pushed for direct talks with the US, which under Bush insisted that any decision had to come through six-way talks.
“Some people speculate that past precedent has taught the North that if they misbehave, the US reaction is generally to seek to get back to the negotiating table pretty quickly,” said Alan Romberg, a fellow at the Stimson Center think tank and a former State Department spokesman.
“It may think that after some reasonably short hiatus they will get their way, including the US accepting bilateral negotiations,” he said.
But Romberg doubted that the Obama administration would support bilateral talks, saying the new president has shown a dedication in his first months in office to involving US allies.
Charles Pritchard, a US negotiator with North Korea under Bush, said he expected the Obama administration to take a broader approach to North Korea that does not get so tied down to the intractable nuclear issue.
“I can expect that the discussion — whether in the six-party talks or bilaterally — will be on an expanded agenda, one which looks at proliferation as a formal discussion topic,” he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS