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Defusing a crisis

Pyongyang's decision to re-enter the Six Party talks is excellent news but the world — and Washington, in particular — must realise this is not the way things were supposed to go. Thanks to gross mishandling by the Bush administration, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, after years of prevarication, jumped into the highly regrettable adventure of testing a nuclear weapon. China has succeeded in persuading its isolated neighbour to get back to the negotiating table but both Beijing and Washington are likely to find it difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. South Africa is an exemplary case of a country with nuclear weapons in the basement deciding — of its own accord during a period of radical change — to eliminate them. Libya is an example of a nation with a nuclear weapons programme agreeing, under pressure and threat, to give it up. However, no state that has staged a public crossing of the nuclear Rubicon has so far agreed to disarm. Will the Democratic People's Republic of Korea be the first such case? Perhaps — but only if the U.S. effects a fundamental shift in policy towards that country and its government.

If conciliation is to be successful, the Six Party process must approach the eventual goal of a de-nuclearised Korean peninsula step by step. North Korea's interlocutors will be within their rights to seek, on a priority basis, guarantees that Pyongyang will keep its nuclear arsenal and knowhow within its borders. By the same token, Washington needs to realise the urgency of withdrawing the financial sanctions it imposed in 2005. But even this step can bring us back to the status quo ante only with one vital difference: North Korea is now an open nuclear weapons state. If this status is to be reversed, it can be only on the basis of the U.S. providing iron-clad security guarantees to North Korea, disavowing the proclaimed goal of bringing about regime change, and working closely with China and South Korea to craft the best possible package of energy incentives — including a light water nuclear reactor under strict safeguards — for Pyongyang. It also makes no sense for the Bush administration to persist in its refusal to enter into a direct bilateral dialogue or resume normal diplomatic and commercial relations with North Korea. This is the direction in which China, South Korea, and Russia need to steer the Six Party talks. Further, it is imperative that the U.S. and Japan do not implement the threatened interdiction of North Korean shipping. The last thing the region needs is for the dialogue process to be scuttled before it restarts because of some gratuitously provocative incident on the high seas.

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