Inteligencia y Seguridad Frente Externo En Profundidad Economia y Finanzas Transparencia
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11/10/2009 | China, North Korea and its nukes - Smile, please

The Economist Staff

After calculated tantrums come the Dear Leader’s calculated charms.

 

FOR spending three full days as a guest of China’s small but infuriating ally, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao presumably expected at least to be given some face in North Korea. He got that in spades. Kim Jong Il came out to the Pyongyang airport to greet him, a rare sortie for North Korea’s dictator even when he was less frail. So, soon after China’s National Day celebrations, Mr Wen (on the left in the picture) and China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi (right), endured another spectacle of mass robotic exuberance, this one to mark 60 years of fraternal relations between the two Communist neighbours. Promises of economic co-operation were made, keeping alive China’s old hopes of exploiting North Korea’s mineral wealth.

More important, Mr Wen returned to Beijing on October 6th with Mr Kim’s assurance that North Korea may be willing to return to the six-party talks on nuclear disarmament (which also involve Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States). In the spring North Korea, angry at foreign condemnation of its firing of a long-range missile, declared these talks dead. It then exploded a nuclear device, its second. Now, after months of bolshiness, North Korea is flashing what counts for charm.

China, host to the six-party talks, is claiming this as a victory. But in concrete terms, Mr Wen came away with little more (for public consumption at least) than had been offered to Dai Bingguo, a senior Chinese diplomat who visited Pyongyang in September. Mr Kim told Mr Dai that North Korea was willing to resolve the nuclear issue “through bilateral and multilateral talks”. Now Mr Kim appears to be hinting even more strongly that a return to six-party negotiations depends on undefined “progress” in bilateral talks with America. North Korea has long sought such talks as a way of winning official recognition and security guarantees from America, still beyond reach 56 years after the end of the Korean war. For China, bilateral talks have the considerable attraction of dumping the North Korean problem in American laps.

Barack Obama’s administration appears minded to try a bilateral approach to engaging North Korea. Stephen Bosworth, Mr Obama’s special envoy, wants to visit Pyongyang. America has tried to reassure friends about such an approach. In the past Japan has disliked the idea, thinking North Korea would drive a wedge between America and Japan, which has long insisted that the fate of Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s be part of the six-party agenda. But Japan’s new government seems more relaxed. This week Katsuya Okada, the foreign minister, said that he would be happy with bilateral talks so long as the outcomes were approved in the six-party format. South Korea may also go along on that basis, though this week it insisted sanctions should stay in place even if dialogue resumes.

The question is what a bilateral approach might achieve. North Korea insists that recognition and guarantees be the precondition for disarmament; the United States that they be the reward. This month America again called for North Korea’s “complete and verifiable denuclearisation”. In response, North Korea now says that dismantling its weapons is “unthinkable even in a dream”, at least without America giving up its own arsenal.

In effect, little can have changed in Mr Kim’s calculations. The awful despot’s chances of survival lie with his deterrent power. To give that up, indeed even to embrace Chinese-style economic modernisation, would bring on the regime’s collapse. Stringing along the international community while shaking it down for aid has worked brilliantly to date, and may work again. Bilateral talks can be dragged out. Meanwhile, in September North Korea admitted for the first time that it was developing a uranium-based route to the bomb. As for its first (plutonium) route, South Korea says that the Yongbyon reactor, which had been shut down and partly dismantled, is now nearly up and running again.

Japan and South Korea will be eager to learn more about Mr Wen’s visit at a three-way summit with China in Beijing on October 10th. The summit, only the second of its kind, is likely to touch on Japan’s vague idea for an East Asia Community, based on closer economic co-operation. North Korea is unlikely to be a founder member.

The Economist (Reino Unido)

 



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16/09/2009|
16/09/2009|
08/09/2009|
07/09/2009|
06/09/2009|
06/09/2009|
05/09/2009|
05/09/2009|
26/08/2009|
21/08/2009|
19/08/2009|
19/08/2009|
15/08/2009|
15/08/2009|
15/08/2009|
11/08/2009|
11/08/2009|
11/08/2009|
11/08/2009|
19/07/2009|
19/07/2009|
18/07/2009|
18/07/2009|
27/03/2009|
22/03/2009|
22/03/2009|
27/01/2009|
27/01/2009|
27/01/2009|
17/01/2009|
17/01/2009|
17/01/2009|
17/01/2009|
17/01/2009|
17/01/2009|
11/01/2009|
06/12/2008|
06/12/2008|
06/12/2008|
06/12/2008|
23/11/2008|
23/11/2008|
16/11/2008|
16/11/2008|
04/11/2008|
04/11/2008|
03/11/2008|
03/11/2008|
24/10/2008|
24/10/2008|
24/10/2008|
24/10/2008|
15/09/2008|
15/09/2008|
15/09/2008|
15/09/2008|
15/09/2008|
15/09/2008|
06/09/2008|
06/09/2008|
05/09/2008|
05/09/2008|
05/09/2008|
05/09/2008|
01/09/2008|
01/09/2008|
01/09/2008|
01/09/2008|
22/08/2008|
22/08/2008|
17/08/2008|
17/08/2008|
16/08/2008|
16/08/2008|
28/07/2008|
28/07/2008|
28/07/2008|
28/07/2008|
28/07/2008|
28/07/2008|
19/07/2008|
19/07/2008|
24/05/2008|
24/05/2008|
03/05/2008|
03/05/2008|
29/04/2008|
11/02/2008|
05/01/2008|
09/12/2007|
18/11/2007|
10/11/2007|
10/11/2007|
06/11/2007|
06/11/2007|
06/09/2007|
26/08/2007|
25/08/2007|
11/07/2007|
16/06/2007|
16/06/2007|
10/06/2007|
10/06/2007|
19/05/2007|
19/05/2007|
19/05/2007|
19/05/2007|
24/04/2007|
24/04/2007|
14/04/2007|
14/04/2007|
05/04/2007|
05/04/2007|
05/04/2007|
28/02/2007|
28/02/2007|
05/02/2007|
05/02/2007|
04/02/2007|
04/02/2007|
04/02/2007|
04/02/2007|
04/02/2007|
04/02/2007|
29/01/2007|
29/01/2007|
29/01/2007|
29/01/2007|
11/01/2007|
11/01/2007|
11/01/2007|
11/01/2007|
27/12/2006|
27/12/2006|
27/12/2006|
27/12/2006|
27/12/2006|
27/12/2006|
20/12/2006|
20/12/2006|
17/11/2006|
30/09/2006|
28/07/2006|
12/04/2006|
12/04/2006|
12/04/2006|
06/03/2006|
21/02/2006|
17/02/2006|
31/01/2006|
10/01/2006|
28/12/2005|
31/10/2005|
26/09/2005|
29/08/2005|
11/08/2005|
08/08/2005|
24/06/2005|
24/06/2005|
24/06/2005|
03/04/2005|
03/04/2005|
03/04/2005|
03/04/2005|

ver + notas
 
Center for the Study of the Presidency
Freedom House