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China-U.S. Cooperation is Crucial

Donald Gregg - For now 6-party talks halt escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. But hard-liners in the Bush administration are already denouncing this development, so it is unclear how much progress can be expected in the 6-party talks.

I believe that the North Koreans agreed to return to the 6-party talks only after a long meeting in Beijing involving Assistant Secretary Chris Hill, Minister Kim Gye Gwan and the Chinese. During that meeting, the North Koreans got something they wanted. I suspect it was an agreement to modify the sanctions imposed on North Korea's dealings with the Banco Delta Asia in Macau. It has been announced that the Chinese will release which of the North Korean banking activities will be resumed, and which will not. This means that there has been some sorting out of what was illegal from things that were legal. This sends the signal to North Korea that they were looking for. Having China make the announcement saves North Korea's face, and avoids any appearance that the U.S. has made a direct concession. This is a good example of effective cooperation and coordinating between the Chinese and the Americans.

This stops, at least for the time being, the danger of continuing escalation of tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. Hard-liners in the Bush administration are already denouncing this development, so it is not clear how much progress can be expected in the six party talks.

Donald P. Gregg was National Security Advisor to Vice-President George H. W. Bush, U.S. ambassador to South Korea (1989-1993), and the chairman of the board of the Korea Society, where he has called for greater engagement with North Korea.


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suresh sheth:

China is not a neutral country in North Korea's nuclear program. China is the main supplier to it. North Korea did not invent trigger necessary to carry out nuclear explosion. As such North Korea's lifeline passes through Beijing and North Korea dances to the tune from Beijing.

The talk of North Korean refugees flooding China if Kim's regime was to collapse is no more realistic than the one that was propounded upon collapse of East Germany or Soviet Union. As such China is scared of a unified Korea and is doing everything possible to prevent it from happening. That is why China has provided or silently acquisced in North Korean nuclear program. China wants to assure that two Koreas never unite. United Korea may even lay claim to vast territories in Southeast China.

Since US does not want to take on China, only course left for US is to promote nuclear Japan, South Korea and Taiwan by sending NPT to dustbin of history.

Mike Gazes:

South Koreans want the North Koreans in China to be sent to South Korea, rather than back to the North. This way, they will be able to drain up the North's population, and thus peacefully overthrow Kim Jong Il's regime, much the same way as the former East Germany.

One thing, however, makes the Chinese worried. After the North tested a nuclear bomb, the South's reaction is very mild. They do not seem to really worry about the North's bomb. This causes a speculation that maybe the South is willing to accept a North Korea with nuclear weapons, and the weapons could then be taken over by South Korea upon the North's collapse.

A South Korea that truly rejects the North's WMD, and punishes the North for its nuclear ambitions, will make China willing to welcome its unification of the whole Korean peninsular.

reporter, USA, http://theclearsky.blogspot.com/:

China is a superpower only in the sense of possessing economic clout and military might. China is this kind of superpower simply because most Chinese people care nothing about the 3rd facet (of superpower greatness): promotion of human rights and democracy.


Consider how the Chinese handle North Korea. Hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees have fled to China. In response, the Chinese spit upon them and aggressively conduct periodic raids to round up hundreds of the refugees. Chinese soldiers then transfer them into Korean custody.


www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2393599_1,00.html


"The North Korean refugee had one request for her captors before the young Chinese soldiers led her back across the steel-girdered bridge on the Yalu River that divides two 'socialist allies'.

'She asked for a comb and some water because she said that if she was going to die she could not face going to heaven looking as dirty and dishevelled as this,' recounted a relative of one soldier who was there.

[...] The soldiers, who later told family members of the incident, marched the woman, who was about 30, to the mid-point of the bridge. North Korean guards were waiting. They signed papers for receipt of the woman, who kept her dignity until that moment. Then, in front of the Chinese troops, one seized her and another speared her hand -- the soft part between thumb and forefinger -- with the point of a sharpened steel cable, which he twisted into a leash.

'She screamed just like a pig when we kill it at home in the village,' the soldier later told his relative. 'Then they dragged her away.'"


North Korean refugees hiding in China have no rights whatsoever. They cannot appeal to the Chinese authorities for help because the Chinese will send the refugees to certain torture and death in North Korea. So, the refugees live a life of quiet desperation.


www.rfa.org/english/about/listenercomments/comments_korean/


One refugee hiding in China wrote a letter to Radio Free Asia and pleaded, "But the Korean-Chinese people abused us because we couldn't speak Chinese. They arranged jobs for us but took our wages. All of us North Korean refugees have nowhere to go to complain. This has lasted for six years. I don't know what to do now. I have thought many times about committing suicide. If I return home, I am afraid of the security police and if the Chinese police arrest me I may be repatriated to North Korea."


While this monstrous brutality is occurring, the Chinese sing the praises of their superpower status. They feel neither guilt nor shame over the horrific injustice that they are inflicting on the helpless refugees.


As China's economic and military power grows, the Chinese increasingly will spread their despicable system of values to the rest of the world.


www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VQNVSPD


"In Ethiopia for instance, which has seen much of its European aid suspended because of gross human-rights abuses, China is believed to have offered to make good any shortfall. In Sudan, which has been accused of genocide, Chinese state firms have built a refinery and are getting involved in production. In repressive Equatorial Guinea, China is also sniffing out opportunities to rival the dominance of western companies."


The American response to China has been flawed. In a rush to deal with the Chinese thugs, Washington has tried to cater to New Delhi. Though India is indeed a democracy, it is not a Western nation. Its system of values are assault Western sensibilities. Consider the fact that the Indians have aggressively developed nuclear weapons.


theclearsky.blogspot.com/#116046305894729134


Instead of aligning ourselves with the Indians, we Americans should find strength in our own system of values. Western values have created Western society to which both Indians and Chinese (who hypocritically reject Western values) want to flee for their lives.


How can we find strength in our own system of values? We should encourage Tokyo, Canberra, and Wellington to build the Asia Pacific Union (APU), structured along the lines of the European Union (EU) and NATO. APU shall spread Western values in Southeast Asia and shall treat China in the same way that the EU treated the Soviet Union.

Shim Jae Hoon:

From Panelist Shim Jae Hoon:

To Mr Gregg,

"Effective cooperation and coordination between China and the US" is undoubtedly crucial in trying to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. The question is why it has taken China so long to restrain its friend and ally in Pyongyang. It should have done so much earlier, before Kim Jong Il detonated his first nuclear device. No country in the world has more leverage over Pyongyang than Beijing: this is evident from Pyongyang's glum acquiescence of China taking at least a half of the North's traditionally claimed territory on Mount Paekdu. The way China has so far responded to the North Korean nuclear crisis raises two related questions -- 1) How serious is it about pursuing the goal of nonproliferation? 2) What is China's real policy imperative in protecting the North Korean regime under Kim Jong Il's control? Needless to say, I am referring to China's secret role in helping Pakistan's nuclear development and Beijing's strategic impulse of keeping the US presence out of the Korean peninsula. It wouldn't be out of logic to claim that China doesn't mind seeing more nuclear states beyond its many borders which already count three nuclear states. Only Japan's potential of going nuclear will make a dent on such nonchalant view.

In freezing Kim Jong Il's account at Banco Delta Asia, the Bush administration could not have chosen a better weapon to put the pressure on Pyongyang. It electrified the North because it attacked the Dear Leader's personal purse. Indeed, some of the money in it could have come from legitimate sources, such as remittance from South Korea's Hyundai business group that paid for Kim's agreement in 2000 to stage a summit meeting with Kim Dae Jung. The rest however, clearly came from illicit deals from missile sales and narcotics trade. Circulation of the counterfeit US dollars alone gives the US the right to blacklist BDA, so freezing of this account should not be negotiable.

Now that the North is returning to the six-party talks, it should not be allowed to think that it has won a new round of victory in its brinkmanship: a notion that its obdurate refusal to return to Beijing has brought Washington to its knee. Nor should it be encouraged to think that policy differences in Washington between "hardliners" and "realists" are such that it can go on using this tactic in the future. The US runs the risk of telling the North it can go on using this tactic by defreezing some of the account.

Mr Gregg's worry that hardliners within the administration are standing in the way of a successful reolution of the six-party talks misreads the situation. On the contrary, I believe it has been the "hardliners" position that has brought the North back to the conference table. Once they return to the talks, the North will revert right back to demanding bilateral talks with the US to discuss, besides the nuclear issue, removal of the US troops from the South and replacement of the armistice agreement with a fullblown peace treaty. That will take another decade to resolve, during which time it can add more bombs to its arsenal. It's not the hardliners, but this endless process of talks that will prove to be the real quagmire for the United States.

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