Thu, Jun 05, 2014 page6

• Putin looking to boost ties with North Korea

  • AP, TOKYO
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  Angry with the West’s response over Ukraine and eager to diversify its options, Russia is moving rapidly to bolster ties with North Korea in a diplomatic nose-thumbing that could complicate the US-led effort to squeeze Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear weapons program.

  Russia’s proactive strategy in Asia, which also involves cozying up to China and has been dubbed “Putin’s pivot,” began years ago as Moscow’s answer to Washington’s much-touted alliance-building and rebalancing of its military forces in the Pacific. However, it has gained a new sense of urgency since Ukraine — and Pyongyang is already getting a big windfall.

  Moscow’s overtures to North Korea reflect both a defensive distancing from the EU and Washington because of their sanctions over Ukraine and a broader, long-term effort by Russia to strengthen its hand in Asia by building political alliances, expanding energy exports and developing Russian regions in Siberia and the Far East.

  For North Korea, the timing could not be better.

  Since the demise of the Soviet Union and the largesse it banked on as a member of the communist bloc, the North has been struggling to keep its economy afloat and has depended heavily on trade and assistance from ally China. Sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs have further isolated the country, and Pyongyang has long feared it could become too beholden to Beijing.

  Better ties with Russia could provide a much needed economic boost, a counterbalance against Chinese influence and a potentially useful wedge against the West in international forums — and particularly in the US-led effort to isolate Pyongyang over its development of nuclear weapons.

  “By strengthening its relationship with North Korea, Russia is trying to enhance its bargaining position vis-a-vis the United States and Japan,” said Narushige Michishita, a North Korea and Asia security expert at Japan’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

  Michishita added that showing Washington he will not be cowed by the sanctions was “one of the most important factors” why Putin is wooing Pyongyang now.

  Moscow remains wary of having a nuclear-armed North Korea on its border, but over the past few months it has courted the North with promises of increased trade and development projects, high-level political exchanges and a vote in the Duma, the top Russian legislative body, to write off nearly US$10 billion in debt held over from the Soviet era.

  It has pledged to reinvest US$1 billion that Pyongyang still owes into a trans-Siberian railway through North Korea to South Korea — a project that is still in the very early stages.

  That, together with a pipeline, would allow Russia to export gas and electricity to South Korea, a potentially lucrative deal for all three.

  Michishita said that the same day the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Russia and North Korea were busy signing an economic trade cooperation pact.

  The warming began around July last year, but it has accelerated as Moscow’s antagonism with the West has grown.

  A three-day visit in April by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev, who is also the presidential envoy for Russia’s far eastern federal district, marked the “culmination of a new phase in Russian-North Korean relations taking shape — a sort of renaissance if you will,” Alexander Vorontsov, a North Korea expert at the Russia Academy of Sciences, wrote recently on the influential 38 North blog.

  “It is still an open question whether the current crisis in Ukraine will result in any more substantial shifts in Russian policy toward North Korea, particularly in dealing with the nuclear and missile issues,” Vorontsov said in his blog post.

  “With the West increasing pressure on Russia as a result of differences over Ukraine, the very fact that Moscow and Pyongyang are subject to US sanctions will objectively draw them together, as well as with China,” he said.
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