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China Shows Willingness to Punish North Korea for Test
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By JOHN O’NEIL and CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: October 10, 2006
China said today that it would support appropriate “punitive actions” against North Korea in response to its announcement of a nuclear test, a harsher step than it has been willing to take in the past.
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At South Korean ports today, freighters waited for word from Seoul about whether they could sail to the North with aid for flood victims in North Korea.
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North Korea’s Nuclear Test The country’s ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, told reporters that “there has to be some punitive actions, but also I think that these actions have to be appropriate.”
He said that the council needed to have a “firm, constructive, appropriate but prudent response to North Korea’s nuclear threat,” according to news services.
It was not clear whether Mr. Guangya’s remarks meant that China would support the resolution proposed by the United States, which calls for international inspections of all cargo going in or out of North Korea.
But the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, gave an upbeat assessment of the Security Council’s talks on North Korea today, even as he and other Bush administration officials sought to fend off criticism that North Korea’s apparent entry into the ranks of nuclear nations represented a failure of American policy.
In Beijing, Chinese officials had earlier reiterated their condemnation of the regime in Pyongyang, although a foreign ministry spokesman said that military action on the issue was “unimaginable.” President Hu Jintao called on all countries to “avoid actions that may lead to escalation or loss of control of the situation,” according to the official Xinhua news agency.
China and Russia are the crucial votes on the Security Council; each has a veto. In the past, China in particular has resisted tough measures against the North that it fears could destabilize its poor and isolated ally.
At a midday briefing at the United Nations in New York, Mr. Bolton said that lower-level experts were working on the details of a proposed resolution, although he said the Russian delegation was still awaiting instructions for how to respond. Russia has opposed threats of force in the West’s diplomatic standoff with Iran over uranium enrichment.
In Washington, the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said that the most important new development regarding North Korea today was the agreement of all Security Council members, including China and Russia, “that there needs to be some appropriate punishment” as a way of persuading North Korea’s leaders to change their behavior.
“The people most directly capable of influencing their decisions have stepped up and said the old policy of appeasement wasn’t working,” Mr. Snow said.
He later backtracked from that label. “I’m not going to say appeasement,” he said. “You have had a primarily carrots-oriented approach.”
Both Mr. Snow and Mr. Bolton responded today critics who have called the claimed nuclear test a product of Mr. Bush’s refusal to allow one-to-one talks between the United States and North Korea.
Mr. Snow said that the approach pursued by President Clinton — which led to an agreement halting the North Korean nuclear program, an agreement Pyongyang is later believed to have violated — “made a lot of sense, but didn’t work.”
He said that the Bush administration has “learned from the mistakes, from the inability of prior administration efforts.”
Likewise, Mr. Bolton asserted that “the nuclear threat was really uncovered during the Bush administration.”
Asked about former Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s recent comment that “it’s not appeasement to talk to your enemies,” Mr. Bolton said, “If they want to talk to us, all they have to do is buy a plane ticket to Beijing.”
He said the United States had met directly with North Korea and was willing to do so again, but only under the umbrella of what are known as the six-nation talks, which also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
Mr. Snow also raised questions today about the truth of North Korea’s claim to have successfully detonated a nuclear device for the first time. Government and private analysts said on Monday that seismic records indicated that a large explosion did take place, but they suggested that it was far smaller than expected and that the test may have been a partial failure.
Mr. Snow said that it would take some time to learn what actually happened, and that there was “a remote possibility that we’ll never know.”
He also questioned whether North Korea could actually have developed a nuclear bomb in the time since it ejected international inspectors and began enriching large amounts of uranium. “You seriously believe that they have actually done everything within two years?” Mr. Snow said, according to news services. “You could have something that is very old and off the shelf, as well.”
Across Asia, the shock waves from North Korea’s announcement continued.
In Tokyo today, Finance Minister Koji Omi said that Japan would consider imposing more financial sanctions on North Korea, while two other cabinet members said Japan might consider imposing a trade embargo.
And Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yasuhisa Shiozaki, declared today that his government was considering “all possibilities,” while officials in China and South Korea were saying that they would oppose any use of force.
Meanwhile, the Yonhap news agency in China quoted an unnamed North Korean official who said that his nation could fire a nuclear-tipped missile unless the United States acts to resolve its standoff with the regime in Pyongyang, according to The Associated Press.
“We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes,” the official said. “That depends on how the U.S. will act.”
The official said the nuclear test was “an expression of our intention to face the United States across the negotiating table,” reported Yonhap, which did not say how or where it contacted the official, or why it did not give the official’s name.
Mr. Bolton said remarks like those quoted by the Yonhap agency were the sort of “threats and intimidation” that North Korea regularly uses as part of negotiations. “It’s worked for them before,” Mr. Bolton said. “It won’t work for them now.”
Mr. Bolton, interviewed on CNN, said that it was President Bush’s “clear preference” to resolve the matter peacefully, but the possibility of force remained.
“We’re keeping the military option on the table, because North Korea needs to know that” it is there,” he said.
In Seoul, Prime Minister Han Myung Sook told Parliament that her government would support United Nations sanctions against the North, but not military action that could spread into a war on the divided, densely armed Korean peninsula.
Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told Parliament in Tokyo today that quick action was needed in responding to North Korea’s announcement of a nuclear test, even as intelligence agencies are still working to confirm that it actually took place and to discern clues to its size and effectiveness.
“Basically, we would like to gather information and confirm it, but there are views that it may be difficult to verify it,” Mr. Abe said, when asked whether Japan would impose punitive measures even without confirmation, Reuters reported. “We’d like to make a comprehensive decision, also taking into account that North Korea has announced that it has carried out a nuclear test.”
“We have no intention of changing our policy that possessing nuclear weapons is not our option,” Mr. Abe addded. “There will be no change in our non-nuclear arms principles.”
President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea met with political leaders and former presidents today for discussions on how far he should revamp South Korea’s decade-old policy of engaging North Korea with aid and investment.
Mr. Roh said a “change” was inevitable, but sounded unsure of how big it should be, as South Korean society appeared to slide into an ideological divide. Liberals have expressed sympathy with the North, seeing the claimed nuclear test as a desperate reaction to what they call the Bush administration’s confrontational approach. Conservatives, meanwhile, view it as proof that Roh’s reconciliation policy has failed.
Nearly one-third of the 1,260 South Korean tourists who planned to visit the scenic Diamond Mountain in North Korea today canceled their trips, said officials at Hyundai-Asan, which runs the tours. At three South Korean ports, freighters waited for word from Seoul about whether they could sail to the North with food and construction materials intended for flood victims in North Korea.
Choe Sang-Hun reported from Seoul and John O’Neil from New York.