>> NEXT LIFE - ATOL?

N Korea: Dr Evil's chance for redemption
By Tom Tobback
BEIJING - "North Korea has an opportunity to change its path. As some Americans might put it, there is a chance for redemption," according to James Kelly, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, speaking about the forthcoming six-party talks this week aimed at defusing the North Korean nuclear crisis.
The second round of talks opens here on Wednesday, involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. Expectations are low, but after North Korea's balking and calling the first round a waste of time, just the fact of the meeting is seen as significant. The stated positions of Washington and Pyongyang are far apart and appear inflexible, so maybe just sitting down is important.
One of the hoped-for results of this round is the formation of lower-level working groups, but these could hardly be called progress if the major parties fail to move any closer on the core issues. The US wants eradication of North Korea's nuclear-weapons programs; North Korea wants the lifting of sanctions, economic assistance, and US security guarantees that Washington won't attack.
The administration of US President George W Bush obviously sees the upcoming talks as the last way out for Pyongyang's "Dr Evil" - the nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, head of what Bush calls part of the "axis of evil", along with Iraq and Iran.
In the safe conservative company of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo in Washington, Kelly stated the US view of Korean history: "While the Republic of Korea has, in recent decades, developed into a leading member of the international community, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [DPRK] took a historic wrong turn from the very start of its existence."
Kelly referred to Bush's anti-nuclear-proliferation speech of February 11: "Abandoning the pursuit of illegal weapons can lead to better relations with the United States and other free nations. Continuing to seek those weapons will not bring security or international prestige, but only political isolation, economic hardship and other unwelcome consequences."
Pyongyang - isolated, hungry, declining
No wonder the DPRK, already politically isolated and scraping the bottom of the barrel for sustenance after years of famine and economic decline, has a clear idea of what those "unwelcome consequences" could mean. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 of November 2002 warned of "grave consequences" if Iraq would not comply with inspections to uncover weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The Bush administration keeps up the tradition of not being willing to recognize what Professor Gavan McCormack of the Australian National University calls "the core of legitimacy in Pyongyang's cry for settlement": its bitter legacy of Japanese colonialism, and the continuing nuclear intimidation, economic embargo and diplomatic isolation by the US.
The basic mechanism of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), recently highlighted again by Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was that non-nuclear countries would agree not to seek nuclear weapons in exchange for nuclear disarmament by the states possessing nuclear weapons. On February 12, ElBaradei called not only for stronger action against nuclear proliferation, but also for "accelerated efforts towards nuclear disarmament".
As much as Washington is urging Kim Jong-il to grab this "chance for redemption", Pyongyang also is demanding that a U-turn be taken by the Bush administration. Ambassador Li Gun, a member of the DPRK negotiating delegation, said: "Unless the US changes its hostile policy toward North Korea, we absolutely cannot give up nuclear weapons."
This comment illustrates that the two positions are so far apart that substantial progress at the upcoming talks is unlikely. Washington has said it wants to examine the DPRK proposal of a re-freeze of its plutonium-based facilities in Yongbyon, but admits that the US goal is nothing less than CVID - the new buzz-word of the Bush administration - Complete (read: including the alleged uranium-enrichment program), Verifiable (read: intrusive inspections after a Libya-style admission of weapons programs and "surrender"), Irreversible (read: a freeze is not enough) and Dismantlement (read: dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear programs).
A second basic principle cited by Kelly to resolve the crisis is the multilateral framework the US has been insisting on from the start, including South Korea, Japan, Russia and China in the negotiations. Not that Washington appears to seek a genuine diversity of views that might differ from its own. On Sunday Kelly arrived in Seoul to coordinate the US, South Korean and Japanese strategies for the six-way talks.
DPRK claims Chinese support for its plan
On the other side, Pyongyang claims the support of its host country, China. DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan met Chinese officials in Beijing two weeks ago and announced that China had agreed "to take joint actions to make substantial progress in the next round of the six-way talks". Pyongyang also stated that Beijing "admitted the reasonability of the package proposal of simultaneous actions for the solution of the nuclear issue and the DPRK-proposed 'reward in return for freeze'".
China reportedly has urged the US not to focus on the uranium-enrichment question, which entered the spotlight after the revelations by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, that he passed nuclear technology to North Korea in the 1990s. Kelly said, "The recent confession of Pakistan's [ Abdul Qadeer] Khan suggests that, if anything, the North Korean HEU [highly enriched uranium] program is of longer duration and more advanced than we had assessed." He added that North Korea is "aggressively pursuing an enriched-uranium nuclear arms program".
Pyongyang, in an official statement on February 10, called the US accusations "mean and groundless propaganda", arguing that the US is "setting afloat such unverifiable fiction about the DPRK's 'enriched uranium program' in order to scour the interior of the DPRK on the basis of a legitimate mandate and attack it just as what it did in Iraq". The rhetoric alone illustrates how difficult it will be to design an acceptable inspection mechanism.
Last week a South Korean official, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that the DPRK recently told a third country it was willing to consult on the issue of its alleged uranium enrichment program with the US. However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry - closer to North Korea than any other country, and host of the talks - said that it could not confirm this information.
Reacting to a suggestion by John Lewis, leader of the recent private US delegation to Pyongyang, that there could have been a mistranslation, Kelly said it was very clear to all members of his team that his DPRK counterpart, First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju, acknowledged the existence of a highly enriched uranium program back in October 2002.
The uranium issue seems to guarantee a deadlock, as neither side can afford to go back on its previous statements. Hence China's suggestion - just to leave it off the table.
South Korean official predicts 'positive' outcome
Chinese and South Korean officials, in their sensitive role of mediators, are trying to put a positive spin on the developments. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Seoul and said the talks will have "substantial content" and will hopefully result in tangible steps to defuse the crisis. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon stated that considerable progress has already been made and said he expects a "visible and positive outcome".
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun did his part by announcing that he would invite Kim Jong-il to visit Seoul after significant progress was made in the six-party talks. He did not mention that Kim Jong-il still has a standing invitation from Kim Dae-jung, Roh's predecessor, who visited Kim in Pyongyang in 2000.
Japan had bilateral contacts with the DPRK earlier this month to discuss the issue of North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s, but Pyongyang has threatened it will oppose Japan's participation in the six-party talks if it wants to put the abduction issue on the agenda. The Japanese parliament's recent decision to enable unilateral economic sanctions against the DPRK has further soured their relationship.
Analysts have argued that the Agreed Framework of 1994, which solved a similar nuclear crisis between the US and the DPRK, was never taken seriously by Washington because the US expected the DPRK to collapse soon after the sudden death of Kim Il-sung, the father of current leader, Kim Jong-il.
With a re-freeze of its plutonium-based nuclear facilities, the DPRK is seeking to return to the conditions similar to those under the Agreed Framework, which also included agreement on eventual full dismantlement. Kelly says that this time the US wants a "fundamental and permanent solution" for North Korea and that he does not expect to resolve the nuclear problem in a matter of a few weeks or even a few months.
Tom Tobback is the creator and editor of Pyongyang Square, a website dedicated to providing independent information on North Korea. He is based in Beijing.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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>> YEAH RIGHT - SHOW ME CASE?

Bin Laden between a hammer and a hard place
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - After taking a dramatic, and suspect, deviation into Iraq, the United States' "war on terror" is right back where it began, in Afghanistan, once again in hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden.
"The hunt has been intense," said US General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "There are areas where we think it is most likely he is, and they remain the same. They haven't changed in months."
"The sand in their hourglass is running out. The troops are re-energized," confirmed the US commanding officer in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General David Barno. "Their day has ended and this year will decisively sound the death knell of their movements in Afghanistan," Barno was quoted as telling journalists in Kabul about bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. "We have unfinished business in this part of the world."
This part of the world, in the latest US initiative to hunt down the al-Qaeda leader - code-named Hammer and Anvil - is the rugged, inhospitable territory on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the Pakistan side, the area includes the semi-autonomous tribal areas, particularly South and North Waziristan.
"On the one side of the border are US and NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] troops, on the other side are Pakistani troops," commented a source familiar with military developments to Asia Times Online. "This time it will be a big, long operation."
Another crucial side to the operation is an overhaul within the Pakistani army "to purge the elements allegedly sexed up with al-Qaeda and the Taliban", the source said, referring to those elements in the army and the intelligence services with sympathies for these groups.
The shakeup follows the recent arrest of several militants of Uzbek origin, as well as an Arab named Waleed bin Azmi, in a raid in the eastern district of the Pakistani port city of Karachi. About a dozen militants managed to escape, while the captured ones were handed over to agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, who found during their interrogations that the operators had been besieged near Wana, South Waziristan, but they were given an escape route, allegedly by officers of the Pakistan armed forces. The operators fled to Karachi, but were rounded up thanks to the local police's intelligence network.
The US presented these facts to Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf - not the first time such incidents have been reported, but this time with the demands that the officers be taken to task and that US officials be allowed to take part in the inquiries to understand better the nexus between Islamists and officers in the Pakistani army.
Several officers are now expected to be arrested. A similar incident occurred last year when Lieutenant-Colonel Khalid Abbassi and one Major Atta were seized, among others. Asia Times Online broke the story of these arrests (Musharraf's army breaking ranks ), causing a stir in the country.
Hammer poised
The ongoing operations on the border are expected to last for some time. The Pakistani military has begun to confront tribal leaders, threatening them with home demolitions and other punishment if they harbor al-Qaeda fighters. This is a highly sensitive matter in an area that is virtually beyond the writ of the administration in Islamabad.
"The Pakistani troops are confronting the tribal elders and making them be accountable for the behavior in their area. That's a traditional approach that has not been used till now in that particular part of Pakistan," said General Barno.
Of course, this area has been the focus of attention ever since the Taliban were driven from Afghanistan in late 2001. Its rugged territory and the close ethnic ties with the Pashtun of Afghanistan make it a natural safe haven, which it has undoubtedly become over the past two years as the Taliban, aided by al-Qaeda, have regrouped.
The starting point for the new US-led operation is Khost in Afghanistan as part of a preemptive plan to curb mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose belt of influence spreads all the way from Khost to Pakistan's North Waziristan Agency. Another belt travels from North Waziristan to the Kunar Valley in Afghanistan, where Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Hebz-i-Islami Afghanistan and de facto leader of the Afghan resistance, is directing operations.
Unlike in the past, though, when operations have focused on limited targets and been of short duration, the current offensive is all-embracing and has as its ultimate goal the destruction of the Afghan resistance (with the cherry on the top being bin Laden's capture). NATO forces have already occupied key places in Afghanistan in an attempt to block off the border and to wait for fugitives flushed out from Pakistan. The anvil is almost in place on one side of the border. Now it is up to the Pakistanis to do their bit on the other side.
And the United States is not taking any chances. US Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet visited Islamabad recently on an unofficial trip. His team stayed in a local hotel, while Tenet was accommodated at the US Embassy. He secretly met with several high-profile Pakistani officials, including his counterpart, the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence. Sources familiar with the meetings told Asia Times Online that a roadmap was sketched for the region, including a "full-scale war" if necessary to smoke out bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Pakistan's commitment in this was sought.
At a time when the United States is keen to leave Afghanistan - elections are due in June but likely to be delayed - this full-scale commitment holds the inherent danger that it might fail, and the US be drawn even deeper into the country's morass. This in turn could trigger a chain of events culminating in another terror attack on the US along the lines of that of September 11, 2001, for example on the Rockefeller Center in New York. The wheel in the "war on terror" in such an event really would have turned full circle.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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>> TEMPEST IN A STRAIT?

China-Taiwan arms race quickens
By Stephen Blank
The rising military tensions in and around Taiwan - and recent Chinese military exercises to intimidate Taiwan independence forces - have not been widely reported, but there is no doubt that the arms race is heating up on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Western military analysts see enormous and growing danger of military pressure from China, if not direct coercion, even conflict, in the strait.
Analysts do not rule out the possibility that if provoked, or if it believes it could lose Taiwan irrevocably, China would attack what it considers its renegade province in order to reunify it with the mainland.
Douglas Feith, US under secretary for defense, meeting with Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army, on February 10-11 in Beijing, urged China to reduce the nearly 500 missiles targeted at Taiwan. Taipei considers these missiles a direct threat and a provocation. On March 20 Taiwan voters will be asked in a referendum whether the island should acquire new defensive missiles systems if China refuses to redirect its missiles. On the same day they will be asked to choose a president, incumbent Chen Shui-bian having staked his career on the "defensive" anti-missile referendum.
Those Chinese missiles have been a major precipitating factor in the current crisis.
On February 12, the US Knight-Ridder News Service reported that China's arms acquisitions and development are tipping the military balance in Beijing's favor - thus heightening Pentagon concerns about an attack against Taiwan.
It also reported that Pentagon officials told Taiwan that by 2006 China might be able to deter US counterattacks and intervention and that more limited action might happen sooner. According to these reports, China is adding not only 75 short-range missiles against Taiwan each year but also an inventory of amphibious carriers and light tanks, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and a network of surveillance satellites.
The purposes of the missile deployments and the qualitative and quantitative improvements to Chinese forces deployed around Taiwan are clear. First, they are intended to deter any US intervention on behalf of Taiwan by threatening the United States with unacceptable losses in such a war. Though many analysts assume that China is not going to invade Taiwan because to do so would be immensely counterproductive, others consider such complacency to be misplaced.
China would attack if sufficiently provoked
First, many Chinese think the United States will not fight wars that involve high casualties to its forces. Therefore the issue is how many casualties China must suffer to occupy the island, not whether an invasion is a sensible policy.
Second, for China, the Taiwan issue is so bound up with the legitimacy of the government that any successful breakaway by Taiwan could lead to the downfall of the Beijing regime. This contingency, or the fear of it, could lead a Chinese government to fight, even from a position of inferiority. And there should be no illusions about China's reluctance to fight, because its military doctrine clearly talks of winning wars based on the inferior fighting the superior power. China has demonstrated that before. Therefore China would fight if sufficiently provoked.
The arms race, however, goes beyond Beijing's annual addition of 50-75 short- and medium-range missiles on its south coast opposite the "renegade" island to encompass its general qualitative and quantitative military buildup - and Taiwan's own response to acquire more advanced weapons systems.
Beyond the missiles being deployed against Taiwan, China is also qualitatively and quantitatively augmenting its capabilities to strike at Taiwan using the range of its conventional forces.
China is carrying out a major military reform by reducing the numbers of its military but simultaneously improving the quality of technology, weapons systems and training. This is taking place at a time of publicly announced increases in defense spending of about 18 percent a year. Given the well-known opacity of Chinese figures and statistics, especially with regard to defense, it is likely that this announced spending reveals only the tip of a vast and growing iceberg of military expenditure.
Because of this secrecy, which is based not only on communist habits but also on the received wisdom of Chinese military thinking, dating back to Sun Zi (Sun Tzu), it is all but impossible to gain an accurate or objective impression of China's real capabilities.
Taiwan fears China could attack in five to 10 years
While most US analysts say the Chinese military is still afflicted with multiple shortcomings and is not a major threat to the United States or to other Asian countries, Taiwanese officials clearly fear that within five to 10 years, the tide of Chinese superiority will be such that China could well attack Taiwan if Beijing decides the circumstances warrant military action.
Nor is it only Taiwan that is concerned.
China's military reforms also clearly encompass planning for contingencies in Xinjiang and Tibet to suppress separatism and dissent there and to conduct operations in Central Asia with the co-signers of the Shanghai Treaty that formed the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO). That treaty represented the first time China ever promised to come to another state's aid, except in the case of North Korea. It was the first time since 1950 that China had projected its military forces beyond its borders, in bilateral exercises with Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia and joint exercises with all the members of the SCO.
Another major issue regarding the Chinese military buildup is its linkage with Russia. At China's request, details about which Russian systems and technologies are being acquired and the extent of cooperation since 2000 have been highly classified. It is known that there were joint talks on military cooperation, strategy and preparedness training of Chinese military personnel in Russian institutions, and joint research projects on high-technology with military applications - but not much more.
The systems China purchased earlier - the Su-27 Flanker fighter, the Sovremennyi destroyer with Sunburn anti-ship missiles, the S-300 anti-aircraft missile and the Kilo-class submarines - have been described in Jane's Intelligence Review by a Chinese source as stopgap acquisitions, but one can tell from Russian sources as well that China is purchasing more technologies for production from Russia than weapons systems.
The purpose of this is to develop an indigenous capacity for producing advanced weapons. Thus it is acquiring, according to most estimates, US$2 billion worth annually from the Russian defense industry, which is still desperate to sell to someone lest it be forced to go out of business as a result of the general Russian economic plague. Russian experts are also talking about selling China even more advanced systems to keep up with its demands and remain technologically competitive.
China builds arms with Russian tech
Meanwhile China has utilized the technologies acquired from Russia to build its own indigenous weapon systems: the new 052-class air-defense destroyers now under construction, the J-10 fighter aircraft, and the Song-class submarines, two of which have been completed, with the rest under construction.
Despite China's well-known difficulties coping with advanced systems and integrating them, these programs bespeak its enormous ambitions in all fields of military development, including the nuclear arena. The fact that China now also is receiving France's enthusiastic endorsement for lifting the European Union's embargo on weapons sales - an embargo that Washington wants preserved, in another instance of Franco-American rivalry - also speaks volumes for its extensive military plans. The embargo was imposed after China's brutal suppression of peaceful pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
Taiwan, for its part, has not been inactive. It clearly has intensified cooperation with the Pentagon, which is helping the island develop its own "critical needs" in order to survive a Chinese missile barrage before US forces can get there. It has advised Taiwan to beef up its anti-submarine capabilities and to create a command structure to function in the event of missile attacks, since Taiwan's anti-missile defenses are weak or non-existent.
Since Taiwan's leadership expects China to gain qualitative superiority during this decade, it also is turning increasingly to high-tech solutions, such as improved command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, space and reconnaissance capabilities (C4ISR), increased bilateral contacts with US military forces, acquisition of Patriot anti-missile missiles, and greater access to US defensive systems.
However, it is not at all clear if this would deter China or if US forces would be able to overcome China's efforts to obtain both a local superiority in a Taiwanese theater or prevent Beijing's winning a first-strike attack against Taiwan - thus keeping any future war there short.
China is not bluffing and blustering
Within a few years, China might well be able to challenge Taiwan - beyond the holding of exercises and blustering during the current campaign for a referendum and elections. The issue of missile defenses in Asia generally and near Taiwan in particular will increase in importance.
Despite the current weight accorded the Middle East, terrorism and Iraq, the China-Taiwan situation is an urgent issue that will not go away. Moreover, it has enormous repercussions for China and all Asia, as well as for the United States' position in Asia.
China has been issuing not-so-veiled threats to Taiwan as it prepares for its elections and referendum on Chinese missiles. It would be foolishly complacent to believe that Chinese capabilities will not be more fully engaged against Taiwan if China feels that it can win safely or if it feels sufficiently provoked to do so. But if Taiwan provokes China, it will most likely do so because of its rising sense of fear and threat from the mainland - a threat that China itself has generated.
This international arms race, encouraged by Moscow and by Washington, each in pursuit of their own perceived vital interests, could soon get out of control and expand to include not only conventional weapons but also space-based systems and nuclear missiles, if not defenses against those missiles.
This arms race, focused on the Taiwan Strait in the short term, will create regional ripples, if not waves, and it is the last thing Asia needs now, in the near future, or ever.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs residing in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)