The Hindu : Focus on N. Korea's security

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 12, 2003

International

International

Focus on N. Korea's security

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE April 11. The buzz word in East Asia being the "security concerns'' of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or the North), China and Russia have moved separately to address this issue amid fears that the U.S. might train its diplomatic and military guns on Pyongyang after completing the `mop-up' operations in Iraq any time soon.

The Chinese Foreign Minister, Li Zhaoxing, has told the visiting South Korean Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Yoon Young-kwan, in Beijing that it was imperative to address the "security concerns'' of the DPRK.

Underlining this rider, Mr. Li expressed the hope that the relevant parties, obviously including the U.S., would exercise restraint and desist from escalating the tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Significantly in this context, Russia has indicated its willingness to guarantee the security interests of the DPRK and to do so in conjunction with the U.S. and China.

According to reports, Moscow would actually like to consider a multilateral guarantee of the DPRK's security if such a proposition could indeed help defuse the crisis over North Korea's suspected nuclear-weapons programme.

The idea is understood to have figured during the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov's visit to Seoul.

In Russia's strategic calculus, the DPRK's security interests could be assured only if a guarantee were to be given by the U.S. as also China besides Moscow itself under any formula that might be worth considering.

The view in the Chinese official circles, too, is that Russia seems willing to underwrite the DPRK's security only in the event of the U.S. and China being able to do likewise and only if such a multilateral guarantee could indeed deflect the North from its suspected atomic arms programme.

In Beijing, the South Korean Foreign Minister called on the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, today to discuss both bilateral issues and the North Korean nuclear question. China reaffirmed its preference for a nuclear-weapons-free Korean peninsula.

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