Guide North Korea away from the Brink by Gareth Evans, International Crisis Group International Herald Tribune / AFP 12:11pm 18th Nov, 2004   November 20, 2004.    China, South Korea urge patience with North Korea. (AFP)    Chinese President Hu Jintao and his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo-Hyun have called for patience in multilateral efforts to defuse the North Korean nuclear crisis. They have agreed to push for a new round of talks at an early date.    The Chinese and South Korean leaders met on the sidelines of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) talks in Santiago, agreeing that the existing six-party talks are the best way to resolve the issue. "Both sides agreed that there was no question that the six-party talks have run into some difficulties and that more sincerity, flexibility and patience was needed," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said. "The two sides agreed that they would cooperate to further play a positive and constructive role and push for a fourth round of six-party talks at an early date," he said.    Three rounds of multilateral talks to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions have taken place since the stand-off erupted in October 2002 with the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States participating. All but North Korea are members of APEC. North Korea boycotted a fourth round of talks scheduled for Beijing in September in order to wait out the November US presidential elections, according to many analysts.    US Secretary of State Colin Powell says North Korea may be relaxing its insistence on one to one talks with the United States to defuse a crisis over its nuclear weapons programs. "We have seen a few signals coming out of North Korea where they said, 'No, we never insisted that it had to be solved in a bilateral way'. We will have to wait and see," Mr Powell said. "We moved in June. We put down a good new proposal and it was welcomed by all our partners there. "The North Koreans took it aboard and they have been studying it."    Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi weighed in urging North Korea to drop its nuclear weapons program and return to the talks. "North Korea's nuclear and missile problem is a serious challenge, not only to the peace and stability of the north-east Asia region but also to the international nuclear non-proliferation system," he said. "We must convince North Korea that it will be in their interest to agree to carry out this dialogue unconditionally and abandon their nuclear plans completely."    China's spokesman says North Korea/US mistrust remained the biggest obstacle to realising a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula. "The main obstacles in the talks is clear," he said. "The extreme mutual mistrust between North Korea and the United States is the biggest barrier to the peaceful resolution of the issue."    SEOUL. November 18, 2004    "Guide North Korea away from the Brink", by Gareth Evans.    The highest priority for the new Bush national security team - right up there alongside Iraq and Israel-Palestine - must be to forge an effective policy toward North Korea, one that transcends Washington's internal divisions, focuses single-mindedly on the immediate nuclear proliferation crisis, and unites its negotiating partners, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.    North Korea remains the least accessible, least understood and potentially most dangerous of the world's countries of concern. No one can be completely confident that it will ever accept a deal, however objectively reasonable, to eliminate its nuclear weapons program in return for security guarantees, comprehensive economic support and normalization of its international relations. But the only way to find out is to put such a deal on the table.    The Bush administration has steadfastly refused to do so over the last two years. This hard-nosed approach has proved worse than useless, with Pyongyang almost certainly having used the time to reprocess enough plutonium to increase its stock of nuclear weapons from two to as many as 10, and to advance a uranium enrichment program that will enable it to produce many more.    North Korea now has enough weapons not only to deter attack, but to sell to other states or terrorist groups. It must know that any such transfer would push to breaking point the military self-restraint of the United States - and maybe other countries as well - but such behavior cannot be ruled out. Nor can freelance activity by rogue groups within North Korea's military. The situation is on a dangerous knife-edge, with the stakes now higher than anywhere else, including Iran.    In his second term, President George W. Bush must change course. It's not a matter of bilateral rather than multilateral talks, as John Kerry rather oddly insisted during the campaign; there remains plenty of scope for direct engagement in the margins of the six-party talks. What is necessary is to put some real substance in the U.S. position, as America's South Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Russian regional negotiating partners have been urging.    Washington made a tentative start in the June 2004 talks, hinting - in an outline described to me by a State Department official as "impressionist rather than pointillist" - at what Pyongyang might expect if it gave up its weapons and programs. But it now has to go a lot further in filling in the detail. After consultation with South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, the United States should make a bold new offer, laying out in detail what steps North Korea must take to dismantle its nuclear programs and exactly what security and economic benefits it stands to get in exchange. What is required is not a rough road map, but a very clear photograph of the destination.    That destination, and how to get there, have been fully described in a new International Crisis Group report published this week. It spells out an eight-stage process, backed by a credible threat of sanctions, at the end of which North Korea would have given up all its nuclear programs and weapons. In return it would have diplomatic relations with Japan, liaison offices with the United States, and a conditional multilateral security guarantee, and would be receiving significant energy assistance and aid from South Korea, Japan and the European Union.    Pyongyang would be in a position to move forward with full diplomatic relations with the United States, sign a peace treaty for the Korean Peninsula, and develop full relations with international financial institutions. The perceived threats to its economic and military security would be significantly reduced, and a less paranoid regime could follow China and Vietnam in a gradual transition away from totalitarianism.    North Korea, on past evidence, is only likely to respond to a mix of attractive inducements backed by the threat of coercive measures. While military measures, however unpalatable, cannot be entirely forsworn, the threat of sharply focused sanctions remains the key discipline. But these will need the cooperation of all the key regional neighbors to be effective.    The bottom line is that only a serious offer from the United States has a chance of being accepted by North Korea, and of putting the other parties in a position to increase pressure on it should a reasonable deal be rejected. And that will require much more being put on he table than has thus far been the case.    (Gareth Evans is president of the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization. The groups latest North Korea report is at www.icg.org.)
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