BEIJING, 30 August 2003 — A solution to the Korean nuclear crisis seems remote after talks ended here yesterday with the United States and North Korea showing no inclination to compromise, analysts said.
Although the six-party talks ran their course with no dramatic walk-outs, the absence of any high-profile signals of commitment to future talks — such as a widely predicted joint communique — was more significant.
While talks are likely to take place again, the exact timing is uncertain and prospects are dim for a substantial narrowing of differences, according to analysts.
“North Korea’s strategy is to show how strong it is, and that it will not compromise,” said Wu Guoguang, an expert on US foreign policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The United States seems to have understood this, and also doesn’t want to compromise,” he said.
It does not help that policy in both Washington and Pyongyang is being formulated and conducted with great ideological vigor, which was reflected in the atmosphere at the talks, analysts said.
“The United States tends to react to the North Koreans like a child in the schoolyard will react to a taunt or an insult,” said Paul Harris, a political scientist at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
“It overreacts and blows it out of proportion.” While North Korean intransigence on matters it considers of vital interest is well-known, US refusal to budge on key issues may also form an important obstacle during talks in the months ahead, according to analysts. “The wild card is in Washington, not in Pyongyang,” said Harris. “US foreign policy is run by ideologues, who aren’t going to compromise unless they are forced to do it.” For instance, it could be of little practical significance that, according to delegates, all sides at the talks agreed that North Korea’s security concerns needed to be addressed.
This is because the United States is unlikely to bow to North Korea’s demand for a non-aggression pact, as it would sit badly with the Bush administration’s doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, analysts said.
“It doesn’t fit at all,” said David Zweig, a political analyst at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
“And it doesn’t fit with the president’s view that (North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il) is a guy who can’t be trusted,” he said.
At the end of yesterday’s talks, North Korea blasted the United States for endangering the next round of talks, and threatened to boost its nuclear arsenal. “Making North Korea and the United States like each other is not easy, but when they know each other’s bottomline, they will be better able to adjust their own positions,” said Chinese University’s Wu. If the six-party format is preserved, talks could go on intermittently over the next several months or even years, analysts said. A nuclear conflict is unlikely to lie at the end of that long road, they added. Instead, for all their current refusals to compromise, the United States and North Korea are eventually likely to reach a deal very similar to the 1994 Agreed Framework, they said.
According to the framework, signed under then President Bill Clinton, the United States promised help in meeting North Korea’s energy demand in return for Pyongyang’s pledge to drop its nuclear program.
“Under Clinton, US policy on North Korea was a messy compromise, which is the best we can expect for a significant period of time,” said Harris.
