Peace Talks With North Korea?
Posted on May 18, 2006
The NY Times are running this front page news.
President Bush’s top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country’s nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.
Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.
North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.
For several years after he first took office, Mr. Bush vowed not to end North Korea’s economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantlement took place. Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.
The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration’s discussions about what to do next said, “There is a sense that they can’t leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become — a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure.”
On the one hand, this could put North Korea on the back burner while we deal with the more imminent threat of Iran. On the other hand its not going to solve the actual problem with North Korea. They will just use it as another opportunity to dance around the issue.
It most certainly will not help the Iran situation by serving as a “model”. In my opinion, Iran has already made up its mind to defy the U.S. and the entire international community in its quest for nuclear power. With China and Russia giving their support to Iran, diplomacy is looking more and more unlikely to resolve the problem. If peace talks with North Korea can put them on the shelf, it may not be such a bad idea if the time comes for military interaction with Iran.
I think Allah Pundit has a good grasp on it all.
A more reasonable explanation for the peace talks is that Bush would want to neutralize NK as best he can before possibly having to move against Iran. A treaty would ensure that the NorKs won’t do something crazy on the Korean peninsula if/when we’re preoccupied with Tehran. It would also give Bush some political capital with which to confront the mullahs. If he can resolve the standoff with North Korea diplomatically, it leaves him less open to the charge of warmongering when the cold war with Tehran turns hot. In fact, it so happens that Debka has a new item tonight alleging that, “[f]or the first time, the Bush administration has embarked on serious preparations for military action against Iran.” I don’t put much stock in it, but surely there are some contingency plans afoot; why not get North Korea off the table in the meantime, just in case?
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