Beijing's mediatory role the key

Pallavi Aiyar
The Hindu, 15 February

Finding a peaceful solution to the nuclear standoff with North Korea is in China's own national interest.

AFTER MORE than three years of a process that seemed more often stalled than in motion, the six-party talks aimed at persuading North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons resulted in a concrete joint agreement on Tuesday. The agreement was arrived at some four months after Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test, making the northeast Asian region one of the world's major flashpoints.

Although the accord falls well short of ensuring the complete denuclearisation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, it has gone some way in cooling tensions in the neighbourhood and reducing the prospects of an imminent crisis.

Perhaps no one is more relieved, than China, the country that has emerged as the fulcrum of the negotiation process. Time and again Beijing has dragged back a recalcitrant North Korea to the negotiating table, urged greater flexibility from the United States, smoothed ruffled feathers, and soothed frayed tempers.

As the host and organiser of the talks, Beijing's delicate role as interlocutor between Pyongyang, its old communist ally, and Washington, its new capitalist trading partner, has been the key.

This is all the more significant given that China is, in fact, not a natural ally of either the U.S. or the DPRK. For the U.S., Beijing represents a formidable emerging competitor. And although Pyongyang and China have deep historic and economic linkages, their relations have grown increasingly complex with China embarking on the path of market reforms and the DPRK sticking resolutely to a brand of Stalinism.

But while neither the U.S. nor North Korea fully trusts Beijing, the two countries trust each other even less. China supplies 90 per cent of the DPRK's oil and is thus the one country in the world that the U.S. believes to have some leverage over Pyongyang. However, it has also resolutely opposed military action on the Korean peninsula, pushing for dialogue as the best way forward and doing its utmost to ensure that Kim Jong-Il's regime does not implode.

In these actions China has not been motivated by either ideological brotherhood with the North or a new-found alliance with Washington. Finding a peaceful solution to the standoff in North Korea is, in fact, strongly in Beijing's own national interest.

North Korea's nuclear weapons are in themselves less of an issue for China than for the U.S., which sees them as a fundamental threat to the global order. For Beijing, on the other hand, Pyongyang's nuclearisation is more threatening as a catalyst for other indirect headaches.

China worries that a nuclear North Korea could lead to the destabilisation of the entire Korean peninsula, the militarisation of Japan, and the increased influence of the U.S. in the region in addition to sending a flood of North Korean refugees across its borders.

The DPRK's defiant nuclear test in October irked Beijing, given the scant regard for China's concerns it displayed. China felt backed into a corner from which it had little choice but to join the United Nations Security Council in slapping sanctions against Pyongyang, despite its belief that sanctions would only lead to greater instability.

The stresses that China faced as it tried to resolve the situation to its own best advantage were revealed in Beijing's oscillation between censure and defence of Pyongyang. Thus swift condemnation of the test was tempered by a statement that China would "continue to develop good-neighbourly and friendly cooperation" with the DPRK and that this policy was "unshakeable."

Again, although China joined the UNSC in imposing sanctions, it almost immediately expressed reservations over the resolution's call for inspecting cargo in and out of the DPRK.

Eventually it was China that once again managed to bring the North back to the six-party talks in December last year, after a hiatus of 13 months. The precise tactics used to achieve this are a matter of speculation but China is likely to have used its considerable economic clout in the DPRK to exert pressure.

China is North Korea's largest trading partner, biggest food donor, and in addition to supplying almost all of the DPRK's oil it also accounts for some 80 per cent of its consumer goods.

China also urged greater flexibility from the U.S., which eventually agreed to rare bilateral meetings with the North in Berlin in January; meetings that are widely believed to have paved the way to this week's agreement. Whatever its shortcomings, the agreement certainly gives the six-party process, Beijing's main foreign policy initiative, a new lease of life and is thus expectedly being portrayed in China as a triumph.

Praise from U.S.

The U.S. has also publicly praised China's role in the talks, boosting the country's claims to be a responsible player in the international system. Some analysts are even hopeful that the six-party talks may eventually evolve into a security dialogue mechanism for the region.
But while Beijing may deserve a pat on its back for some hard work thus far, the real challenge still lies ahead. Although the fact that China, South Korea, Russia, and Japan being signatories to this latest agreement is being heralded as a reason to expect it to be more successful than the 1994 bilateral "framework agreement" between Pyongyang and Washington, there are no guarantees. The DPRK has acted in defiance of the international community, including China, before.

The months ahead will thus continue to be difficult ones for China as it tries to balance its own national interest with the actions of an unreliable Pyongyang and pressure from a still wary U.S. For Beijing's diplomats there will be little time to rest on their laurels.