UN nuclear experts leaving North Korea

WASHINGTON, January 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The United States, Japan and South Korea will struggle to fuse divergent strands in their common North Korea policy this week, hoping to contain a building nuclear crisis with the communist state.

Senior officials from the three allies will meet for two days of talks at the State Department, faced by a diplomatic offensive by Pyongyang, and with Washington asking other Asian powers to condemn the North's twin nuclear programs, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) Sunday, January 5.

Senior State Department Asia policymaker James Kelly will host the talks, which begin with bilateral consultations Monday, January 6, before a three-way encounter and an expected joint statement Tuesday.

South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik and Japanese Foreign Ministry official Mitoji Yabunaka will also attend.

"This is part of a continuing process of very close and cooperative consultations among the three countries," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

But while each member of the so-called Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG), stresses the need to work together on North Korea policy, they will have their work cut out in coming up with a common front.

Openly Different Positions

TCOG was formalized in Hawaii, in April 1999, to frustrate North Korea's historical strategy of aiming a diplomatic wedge between the three allies.

But now members must reconcile openly different positions. Tensions have particularly acute over how to deal with North Korea between Seoul and Washington.

The Bush administration has been cajoling its allies, as well as Russia and China, to pressure Pyongyang to convince it to renounce its nuclear programs.

It says it will not talk or bargain with the Stalinist state, a process it believes would be tantamount to nuclear blackmail, until it refreezes a plutonium-based nuclear program and halts a separate nuclear weapons drive based on enriched uranium.

South Korea, which views Washington's hard line (diplomatic) approach over the last two years as a key factor in the failure of its "sunshine policy" of engaging Pyongyang, maintains that pressure on North Korea will not work.

Aides to President-elect Roh Moo-Hyun have said South Korea is preparing a compromise deal between Pyongyang and Washington that they will bring up in the TCOG talks.

"The TCOG meeting will discuss how to respond if the North takes a 'positive attitude'," an unidentified official told Seoul's Yonhap news agency.

The United States has sidestepped the notion of a compromise, and the State Department said Friday, January 3, there had so far been no formal South Korean proposal for such a solution.

The South Korean official said TCOG would "focus more on finding ways to settle the issue than on strengthening sanctions" on the North.

The Washington meeting will not decide whether to halt construction on a project to build a light-water reactor for Pyongyang, mandated under a now ruptured 1994 deal supposed to freeze the plutonium-based program, the official said.

Japan will reportedly go into the talks with a much harder line, seeking to censure North Korea for its actions in a swiftly building crisis in late December.

Tokyo was considering punitive measures against Pyongyang, including the suspension of trade and remittance ties, to protest against the nuclear programs, reports in Tokyo said.

Japan may even be ready to act against Pyongyang without a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Japanese diplomats, however, refused to confirm the reports but Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has warned Pyongyang it should not underestimate the world's determination to condemn its "provocative" nuclear moves.

Normalization talks between Japan and North Korea, which resumed in October after a two-year hiatus, are stalled after Tokyo refused to return Japanese nationals once kidnapped by North Korean agents some 24 years ago.

Russia & China Seek Defusing Crisis

In Moscow, meanwhile, Russia Sunday pledged to join China in international efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon steps to reactivate its nuclear program.

As he met a high-ranking South Korean envoy, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said that traditional allies Moscow and Beijing had the best chance of influencing the secretive state.

"We have to work, to make use of Russia's and China's potential and the potential influence of other countries," Losyukov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

The Russian diplomat's comments came as he met South Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Han-Kyung, whose trip is part of a diplomatic offensive by Seoul to exert pressure on Pyongyang and force it to give up its nuclear ambitions.

Russia is seen as being among the few states, along with China, with any leverage with the regime of North Korean President Kim Jong-Il, who provoked a crisis by expelling U.N. nuclear inspectors and reactivating the country's nuclear program.

China, Pyongyang's closest ally, agreed Thursday, January 2, to use its influence on North Korea to help resolve the crisis over the state's suspected nuclear weapons plans after talks with another South Korean envoy.

North Korea Blames U.S.

North Korea, for its part, lashed out at the U.S. Saturday, January 4, charging that Washington was "entirely to blame" for the current crisis.

The issue shot into the news on December 12 when North Korea announced it was resuming its nuclear program, which had been frozen in 1994 under an accord with the United States.

Several days ago, Pyongyang expelled the last inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who had been monitoring a nuclear complex north of Pyongyang believed to be capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

It also suggested it would no longer consider itself bound by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Losyukov urged North Korea and the United States to negotiate to prevent the tense standoff from getting any worse.

"A solution must be found in a calm and constructive atmosphere," said the Russian diplomat, who is in charge of ties with Asian countries.

"The rise in tension, the threats and the sanctions are counterproductive. They must work on the diplomatic level, and we are ready to cooperate with all the parties involved," he said in comments quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency.