Koreas move forward - Agreement An Important Stage In A Difficult Negotiation

Salman Haidar
The Staesman, 11 October

After a break of seven years, summit meetings between the leaders of North and South Korea have been resumed. President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea has paid a three-day visit to Pyongyang for talks with his counterpart, Chairman Kim Jong-il of North Korea. Almost simultaneously as it happened, the six-party talks in which both these countries and four others have been taking part crossed another hurdle on the path to the negotiated de-nuclearisation of North Korea. Thus the trends in the Far East, so often the cause of tension and alarm, are currently hopeful and encouraging.

The journey of President Roh from South to North was very carefully choreographed. The President will demit office in just a few months and his approval ratings have slipped badly. Hence the purpose and utility of his visit came in for much skeptical analysis, with his critics expressing the view that in a bid to burnish his image and assure his legacy he might make unwarranted concessions to the ancient adversary.

Low profile

The euphoria created by the first cross-border Presidential journey in the year 2000 has long since waned and the impulse towards reunification is not as pressing as once it was. Nor does North Korea look like the tottering regime it once seemed to be, obliged to seek economic succour from the South for its own survival. Thus the rather lofty approach to its sundered sibling that was to be observed a decade or two ago does not animate Seoul’s policy today. Expectations from the visit were deliberately kept low. It was not projected as an event that would re-shape the relationship, and nothing more than a set of useful steps forward, mainly economic, were envisaged as the outcome.

Even so, some symbolic gestures were made by President Roh, most conspicuously his walking across the demarcation line in the course of his journey ~ shades of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee taking a bus to Lahore! In the event, the two sides were able to agree on a number of measures that went considerably further than expected. Most of these were in the economic domain but there were also some gestures with a bearing on the security relationship between the two countries. The South has agreed to build a special economic zone at a place called Haeju, which will be the second of its kind after the zone at Kaesong that came out of the earlier presidential visit.

Progress in Kaesong, where South Korean investment was expected to rush, has been somewhat slow, so stepping it up is another aspect of the present agreement. The South is also to construct a railway, a major highway and a shipbuilding complex in the North. These are some of the practical benefits of the policy of engagement that has been consistently pursued by the South even through the turbulence caused by the North’s defiance of international opinion in building up its nuclear weapons capacity.

While economic ties are to be strengthened by these means, there were many indications to suggest that the deep suspicions between the two sides are far from abated. The ideological divisions run deep and it does not take much to trigger doubt and misgiving. Any talk of reform by the South could be interpreted as covert criticism, or worse, by the North, so the joint statement at the end of the visit makes a point of affirming mutual respect between the parties, thus pointing to acceptance of the status quo and not trying to disturb it according to the predilections of either party.

How to build mutual trust remains a difficult task for the future. Nevertheless, the final statement gives one or two indications of progress. The parties agreed to work towards a peace treaty between them, for technically they are still at war, stabilized only by an armistice agreement of 1953. This mention of a peace treaty is interpreted as a small shift forward, for hitherto North Korea has insisted that peace must be negotiated within the larger group that was involved in the war, including the UN, China, the USA and others. A bilateral peace arrangement between the Koreas may not be a substitute for the other, yet readiness to talk peace bilaterally is not without significance.

Among the other issues that were satisfactorily settled were a couple of relatively small territorial disputes that have been unresolved for many years. One relates to disputed waters in the Yellow Sea and has been settled by agreeing on a joint fishing area accessible to either side. Similarly, they agreed on joint use of a nearby river and on defining shipping routes that both could use in waters where there have been many clashes in the past. These should be of particular interest in South Asia where similar unresolved problems await solution. Indo-Pak differences in the Rann of Kutch are not dissimilar to the now settled problem in the Yellow Sea, so the Far Eastern experience could hold useful lessons for South Asia.

North Korea’s activities in the nuclear area, culminating in the conduct of a nuclear test last year, have been a matter of great international attention and have triggered a determined effort by major countries led by the USA to bring them to a halt. It has been a hard struggle on all sides for North Korea has not been prepared to knuckle down easily, but nevertheless it has been willing to engage in discussions within a six-nation forum (the two Koreas, the USA, China, Japan, Russia) to see if a meeting ground can be found.

Nuclear matters

After a frustrating earlier series of meetings, something useful emerged from their efforts earlier this year, and even while the bilateral visit was taking place, a further series of measures was announced on nuclear matters. North Korea, it was agreed, will disable certain of its nuclear facilities by the end of the year, specifically the Yongbyon plant that was shut down by agreement in February and is now to be disabled. A timetable for the disclosure of North Korea’s nuclear facilities and their disablement was made known. In return, the others among the six powers will provide North Korea with 950,000 tonnes of fuel oil. There is as yet no resolution of the demand that North Korea should give up its nuclear weapons, a key goal of its interlocutors. However, the USA is to start the process of removing North Korea from its list of terrorist nations.

This agreement represents an important stage in a difficult negotiation. While it has been welcomed by many, it has also been attacked by conservatives who say that it amounts to rewarding North Korea for breaking the rules. In the larger picture, the question relates to the use of diplomatic rather than minatory methods in dealing with nuclear confrontations, with obvious reference to the looming issues in Iran. The present success in North Korea should strengthen those who want to adopt comparable means in Iran.

The author is India’s former Foreign Secretary