Analysis: N Korea's move

By Aidan Foster-Carter

After months of dangerous brinkmanship, at last there is a ray of hope on the North Korean nuclear crisis.

The news that North Korea will hold talks in Beijing next week with not only the US, but also China, is obviously good news - as far as it goes.

Kim Jong-il's aim is to hold on to his regime at any cost

Yet how far is that?

To talk of a "breakthrough", already, is jumping the gun. In the long and tortuous history of negotiating with Pyongyang, the clear lesson is not to count your chickens before they are hatched. To extend the metaphor, can we even be certain there is an egg yet?

Granted, China's role is doubly interesting. In general, North Korea seems to have made a concession. Hitherto it had insisted on bilateral talks with the US alone, "knee to knee".

With typically fierce invective, it had denounced all efforts to multilateralise the issue - such as taking it to the UN Security Council, which on 9 April issued a mild statement of concern.

Chinese opposition helped ensure that rebuke was not stronger. This, and the planned talks, suggest that China in particular plans to take more of a lead regarding its maverick neighbour from now on.

Beijing's passivity hitherto, on an issue directly affecting its own borders and security, had been puzzling. Russia and other mediators have been much more visibly active.

Talks format

Still, we are by no means home and dry yet. Indeed we are hardly at first base. For a start, it is not certain that all three parties agree on the format of these upcoming talks.

Even if the two or three sides do get around a table, this is just the start of a very long haul

Much weight has been placed on a North Korean statement last Saturday, saying it will "not stick to any particular dialogue format". Yet there may be less to this than meets the eye.

Against that one sentence, the rest of the article showed Pyongyang still wedded to a basically bilateral process. In their eyes, I predict, China is merely the host and facilitator: furnishing the chess board, so to speak. But the players, no question, are North Korea and the US.

The US may say that it "reserves the right" to add other dialogue participants but in that case, I should not be surprised if North Korea reserves the right to walk away.

And even if the two or three sides do get around a table, this is just the start of a very long haul.

Also overlooked, in the excitement over Pyongyang's apparent shift in position, was that it is strictly conditional - on a "bold switchover" in US policy. Is that plausible?

True, George Bush too has in the past spoken of a "bold initiative". Yet when South Korea's Foreign Minister, Yoon Young-kwan, recently urged the US to engage Kim Jong-il - like Nixon and Kissinger did with Mao Zedong 30 years ago - he got a frosty response in Washington.

Post-Iraq, how likely is it that a Republican administration, whose hawks are crowing after toppling Saddam Hussein, will rush to embrace a member of the "axis of evil" whom Bush is on record as admitting he "loathes"? Common ground will be hard to find.

Stalling

As North Korea sees it, the moral of Iraq is that even if you play along and let inspectors in, that will not stop the US invading anyway if it has a mind to.

Another key question is that hardy perennial: What is Pyongyang's game?

Those who fondly imagine that "shock and awe" in Iraq has driven Kim Jong-il to sue for peace may be deluding themselves - and they have not been reading the Pyongyang press.

There are signs that North Korea has drawn just the opposite conclusion from recent events.

Thus on 29 March, Rodong Sinmun, the daily of the ruling Korean Workers Party (KWP), said that North Korea "would have already met the same miserable fate as Iraq's, had it accepted the demand raised by the imperialists for 'nuclear inspection' and disarmament."

Warning that Pyongyang "will not make any slightest concession or compromise", the paper pledged to increase defence capacity as the country's "number one lifeline".

As North Korea sees it, the moral of Iraq is that even if you play along and let inspectors in, that will not stop the US invading anyway if it has a mind to.

So by agreeing to talk, Kim Jong-il may just be playing for time. On past form, he may calculate that the merest hint of amenability will get him off the hook for the time being.

Meanwhile, no doubt, it is full speed ahead with not one, but two, nuclear programmes.

If reprocessing restarts at the nuclear facility in Yongbyon, North Korea could have enough plutonium for half a dozen bombs in as many months. But that is a red line which might goad the US too far.

A better bet is the separate, highly enriched uranium operation, whose locations are not even known. Some in Washington now reckon that this too may be within months of yielding a bomb, rather than years as had been thought.

So put yourself in Kim Jong-il's shoes. Regime survival is his sole aim. To avoid the fate of Saddam Hussein, is he truly sitting down to surrender his ace cards? Or has he concluded the exact opposite: that only a real live nuclear deterrent will keep shock and awe at bay?

Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University