[NukeNet] North Korea Warns of More Nuclear Tests, Considers Sanctions A Declaration Of War

[Bill Smirnow]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/world/asia/12korea.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/world/asia/12korea.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
North Korea Warns of More Nuclear Tests

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By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: October 12, 2006
SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 11 - North Korea said
Wednesday that it would consider sanctions a
"declaration of a war" and vowed to carry out
further nuclear tests if the United States
maintained a "hostile attitude." The North seems
to be following a clear strategy that experts say
has allowed it, a small, isolated, nearly bankrupt
nation, to keep the attention of the United States
for more than a decade.

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Kyodo News/Associated Press
Kim Yong-nam, a top North Korean official,
criticized the United States for what he called
its "hostile attitude" toward North Korea.

In the country's first remarks since its reported
nuclear test on Monday, North Korea said it felt
compelled to prove its nuclear capacity to
"protect its sovereignty and right to existence
from the daily increasing danger of war" from the
United States.

North Korea, in a statement released by its
official news agency, adopted its
characteristically defiant tone as members of the
United Nations Security Council prepared to
discuss what type of sanctions to mete out.

In a rare interview, Kim Yong-nam, the North's
second most powerful leader, said, "The issue of
future nuclear tests is linked to U.S. policy
toward our country."

"If the United States continues to take a hostile
attitude and apply pressure on us in various
forms," Mr. Kim told a Japanese news agency, "we
will have no choice but to take physical steps to
deal with that."

The North Korean news agency said, "The nuclear
test was entirely attributable to the U.S. nuclear
threat, sanctions and pressure."

At the United Nations, ambassadors from Japan and
the five permanent members of the Security
Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the
United States - met to settle differences over a
resolution that would impose sanctions on North
Korea. Ambassador John R. Bolton said the United
States intended to circulate a revised draft on
Thursday in the hope of having a vote by Friday.

The United States is seeking international
inspections of all cargo into and out of North
Korea to intercept weapons-related material and a
resolution drafted under Chapter VII of the United
Nations Charter that poses the possibility of
military enforcement. China and Russia are
resisting that, though they say they favor strict
punishments for North Korea's defiance of Council
warnings not to conduct weapons tests. Secretary
General Kofi Annan called the apparent nuclear
test "unacceptable" and said he expected the
Council to take "a firm action."

Asked whether the United States should deal
directly with North Korea, Mr. Annan said: "I have
always argued that we should talk to parties whose
behavior we want to change, whose behavior we want
to influence. And from that point of view, I
believe that the U.S. and North Korea should talk.
They did talk in the past."

That may well be North Korea's aim. Despite a
carefully cultivated reputation as a volatile,
capricious leader, Kim Jong-il has pursued a
consistent, even canny, strategy in his pursuit of
nuclear arms.

As Kim Yong-nam's remarks indicate, North Korea -
an increasingly isolated country that has battled
famine, a collapsing economy and desertion across
its borders - has seen nuclear weapons as a form
of defense as well as a potential threat. Its
leaders have used that threat as way to wrest
concessions from Western powers, and gain
protection against what they see as hostile
nations determined to topple their government.

North Korea embarked on this course in 1993, when
it announced that it was pulling out of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then won an
agreement from the Clinton administration for help
in building two nuclear power reactors in exchange
for freezing its nuclear activities. Over the
ensuing years, despite disastrous economic
conditions that led to famine in the mid- to
late-1990's, the North succeeded in getting the
world's attention through a series of crises of
its own making, from declarations that it had
nuclear weapons to missile launchings.

"Every time they've played this crisis escalation
strategy with us before, it's worked," said Scott
Snyder, a Korea expert with the Asia Foundation in
Washington and the author of "Negotiating on the
Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior."

"The mind-set was that if you're a small state
like North Korea and there are many other problems
in the world, the only way to get the United
States' attention is to escalate things in such a
way as to force the Bush administration to deal
with North Korea directly," he said.

Joining the club of nuclear powers was in keeping
with North Korea's strategy to be treated on equal
terms with Washington, Mr. Snyder said.

The North made its intentions explicit in March
2005 , declaring that, as a nuclear power, it
wanted the six-nation talks over its nuclear
program to focus instead on "disarmament talks
where participants can solve the issue on an equal
basis."

The nuclear test was also the product of North
Korea's sense of insecurity - one that grew keener
over the past decade because of its troubled
economy and the leadership's inability to control
a population that began spilling out, by tens of
thousands, across the border into China and some
to South Korea. In the past few years, as North
Korea began liberalizing its economy and trade
boomed with China, new threats of money-making and
corruption materialized.



The North made its intentions explicit in March
2005 declaring that, as a nuclear power, it wanted
the six-nation talks over its nuclear program to
focus instead on "disarmament talks where
participants can solve the issue on an equal
basis."

The nuclear test was also the product of North
Korea's sense of insecurity - one that grew keener
over the past decade because of its troubled
economy and the leadership's inability to control
a population that began spilling out, by tens of
thousands, across the border into China and some
to South Korea. In the past few years, as North
Korea began liberalizing its economy and trade
boomed with China, new threats of money-making and
corruption materialized.

Many North Koreans still depend on international
food aid because of the collapse of the state's
food rationing system, though life is less
precarious than in the 1990's. Those living near
the porous border with China, and even those in
remote areas, have increasing access to
information from the outside world and contact
with it.

At the same time, the North is confronted by a
Bush administration that described its leader, Kim
Jong-il, as a "pygmy" and lumped it into an "axis
of evil." The toppling of Saddam Hussein magnified
the threat.

"The nuclear test is a response to the threat that
North Korea feels," said Bruce Cumings, a
professor of history at the University of Chicago
and an expert on North Korea. "It's entirely real.
It's not a figment of their imagination. They were
put in the axis of evil. We have nuclear weapons
pointed at them, and we have for decades."

North Korea is "a garrison state of astonishing
proportions," he said. "It's not going to commit
suicide by attacking South Korea or Japan with
nuclear bombs. It knows it will lose. Their
fundamental orientation is being hunkered down for
defense."

The test, experts said, also grew out of the North
's frustrations at the stalled six-nation talks
and what it perceived as the Bush administration's
reluctance to engage in genuine negotiations. Last
year, the United States offered security and
economic incentives in return for the North's
freezing of its nuclear program, but the deal
quickly fell apart over its sequence. What is
more, Washington imposed economic sanctions around
the same time, leading the North to withdraw from
the talks.

"North Korea has nothing to show for its
diplomatic efforts," said Peter Beck, the
Northeast Asia project director at the
International Crisis Group, adding that North
Korea had also engaged in recent years in
fruitless diplomacy with Japan and Europe. "That
makes the military perspective much more
appealing."

But for North Korea's closest neighbors, experts
said, its leverage comes from its weakness. For
South Korea and China, the prospects of the North'
s collapse and a flood of refugees, as well as the
possibility of an even more intractable successor
to Mr. Kim, are perhaps even more worrisome
developments than nuclear weapons.

In recent days, President Roh Moo-hyun of South
Korea has indicated a willingness to be tough on
the North by casting doubts about the South's
policy of engaging North Korea. He suspended aid
and said the two major projects - industrial and
tourist zones operated by South Koreans inside the
North - would be put under review. But it is not
clear how long the tough stance will last.

"We're under a lot of pressure both domestically
and internationally to give up on engagement,"
said a senior South Korean official. "But we
really don't have an alternative other than the
engagement policy."