 US should engage N.Koreans: studyWashington (AFP) June 14, 2010 - The Obama administration has been "halfhearted" on North Korea and needs a long-term strategy that includes engaging ordinary people to weaken the regime's grip, a study said Tuesday. The Council on Foreign Relations convened a task force of prominent experts to chart out how to deal with the hardline communist state, which has carried out two nuclear tests and is accused of torpedoing a South Korean warship. President Barack Obama's administration has described its policy as "strategic patience" -- waiting for North Korea to return to past commitments without the United States offering new concessions. The task force was skeptical and said the administration should show more urgency. "Despite the strong words, the Obama administration's actions to date suggest that the objective of rollback of North Korea's nuclear program is halfhearted," the study said. "The timeframe for achieving denuclearization is so vague that there is a significant risk that 'strategic patience' will result in acquiescence to North Korea's nuclear status as a fait accompli," it said. The task force was chaired by Charles Pritchard, a former top US negotiator with North Korea who is known for supporting engagement, and John Telelli, a retired general who formerly headed US troops in South Korea. Scott Snyder, head of the Center for US-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation, directed the study. Twenty other US experts on Korea took part in the task force, although some wrote dissents from the report. Among its key recommendations, the report urged the United States to find ways to engage ordinary North Koreans by encouraging exchanges and inviting students to study at US universities -- in fields other than nuclear science. The task force said the US focus on sanctions against North Korea reinforced the country's isolation and "may ironically strengthen the regime's capacity to maintain political control." By contrast, "expanding the exposure of individual North Koreans to the outside world may eventually result in internally driven regime transformation," it said. The study acknowledged that it would be difficult to end North Korea's nuclear program, saying that no country that has conducted a nuclear test has reversed course without a change in political leadership. But the task force said the United States should at least try as "the costs of inaction and acquiescence are so high." It said the top US priority should be to stop North Korea from exporting nuclear technology to other countries -- as it allegedly has done to Libya and Syria. The report said that the role of China would be crucial to determine whether "it is possible to achieve a strategy that goes beyond containment and management of North Korea's nuclear and missile aspirations to rollback." It recommended that the United States start a "high-level strategic dialogue" with China on North Korea's future. China is Pyongyang's main patron and is seen by many analysts as most interested in stability, fearing that the collapse of North Korea could trigger a flood of refugees or create a unified, US-allied Korea on its border. The report also urged strong solidarity with South Korea in the wake of the March sinking of the Cheonan warship, which left 46 dead. The task force urged Obama to push Congress to ratify a free-trade agreement with South Korea in 2011. Some of Obama's allies are pushing for greater concessions to US automakers. The report also urged a vigorous commitment to human rights, including stepping up radio broadcasts into North Korea and supporting refugees coming into China. |
North Korea threatened military action Tuesday in response to any UN censure over the sinking of a South Korean warship, triggering a US rebuke and ratcheting up tensions in the volatile Korean peninsula. "We don't want the Security Council to take measures provoking us," Pyongyang's ambassador to the United Nations, Sin Son Ho, told reporters in a rare press conference here by North Korea.
If the 15-member UN Security Council takes action against Pyongyang "follow-up measures will be carried out by our military forces...I (will) lose my job," he warned.
In Washington, State department spokesman Philip Crowley slammed what he called yet another example of Pyongyang's "provocative behavior."
Sin also insisted that North Korean investigators be allowed to visit the site where the South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, was sunk by a torpedo on March 26, killing 46 sailors.
"If South Korea has nothing to hide, there is no reason for them not to accept our inspection group," he said.
Tensions surged on the Korean peninsula after a multinational investigation said last month a submarine from the North torpedoed the 1,200-tonne Cheonan near the disputed Yellow Sea border.
Pyongyang has angrily denied any responsibility and on Saturday the general staff of the Korean People's Army said it would attack loudspeakers set up by Seoul to broadcast cross-border propaganda.
A South Korean envoy Monday urged the Security Council to take action against the North after giving evidence about the incident.
"We identified the torpedo as a North Korean CHT02D on the basis of our recovered pieces of the torpedo," said Yoon Duk-Yong, a physics and material science expert at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
The Security Council has called on South and North Korea "to refrain from any act that could escalate tension in the region" and to preserve peace and stability on the peninsula.
But the North Korean envoy Tuesday dismissed the South Korean version as "fabrication."
He even quipped that a North Korean torpedo may also be blamed for last week's failure of a South Korean rocket launch.
The Naro-1 rocket, which was Russian-made but assembled in South Korea, veered off course and exploded 137 seconds after blast-off last Thursday.
"We need to dispatch our own investigative group to the site of the sinking," Sin said, accusing the United States of fomenting the tensions.
"If the Security Council formally debates this case with only the unilateral 'investigation result' of the South but without verification by the DPRK (North Korea), the victim, it will mean that the Security Council takes the side of one party of dispute excluding the other," he added.
Pyongyang's envoy noted that at the time of the sinking, joint US-South Korean military exercises "Foal Eagle" were in full swing with the deployment of an array of anti-submarine and anti-air assets.
"Amid these conditions, it is doubtful that a DPRK (North Korea) small-size submarine attacked the corvette 'Cheonan,' which has anti-submarine capacity," he said.
"It is also inconceivable that the US and South Korean warships equipped with state-of-the-art devices failed to detect the submarine," Sin said.
The envoy also wondered why the survivors "were ordered to keep silent about the sinking" and why the South Korean military did not release "the records of sailing and communications and visual records of the time of the incident."
Washington mostly benefited from the incident, he alleged, saying the United States "hyped the threat from North Korea" to force Japan's ruling Democratic Party to give up plans to drive US forces out of a base in Okinawa.
He accused the United States of using the incident to "re-accelerate the formation of the tripartite alliance keeping hold on Japan and South Korea as its servants."
Washington was seeking "to strike a deal of massive arms trade with South Korea and to dispatch US aircraft carriers to the West Sea of Korea, which is a delicate area in terms of security of the Korean peninsula and China," Sin said.
The two Koreas have remained technically at war since the end of the 1950-53 conflict, which was ended only by an armistice.
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