A military solution from the United States would put South Korea in too much danger.

A military solution fromthe United States wouldput South Korea intoo much danger.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
As North Korea's Kim Jong Il moves to create a nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea is -- by default -- taking the lead this week as diplomatic firefighter.
In recent days, President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have ruled out both a U.S. military strike and tougher economic sanctions, yet remain firm in rejecting direct negotiations with Pyongyang.
With the United States taking a hard line, and Asian partners largely at odds, current options for a quick and simple solution seem bleak. That leaves South Korea scrambling for help from China, Russia and Japan. North Korea's chief economic ally, China, agreed Thursday to use diplomatic means to defuse the crisis -- without giving specifics. South Korea will send an envoy today to urge Moscow to use its recently resurrected ties to Pyongyang to persuade it to back down.
Another phase of crisis
"We are in the next phase of this crisis now," argues Scott Snyder of the Asia Foundation in Seoul. "What Washington really needs is time -- time to consider a plan, time to work with the incoming government in Seoul. They also need the North to step back and give the U.S. some room to talk with them directly. They need the North to say something like, 'We won't start up our experimental reactor. We have found another source of electricity.'"
The Bush administration won't submit to North Korea's game of nuclear blackmail, insisting that, unlike a military strategy toward Iraq, diplomacy is the best way to persuade the North not to develop as many as four to six nuclear weapons in the coming year. The North said Tuesday it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- the same threat that 10 years ago forced the United States to consider military action in Korea.
In the past month, the isolated, cash-poor Stalinist state of North Korea -- ruled by a crafty and eccentric leader who is revered as a god and who has used his nuclear program as a bargaining chip -- has suddenly come to international stage center.
Last week, the North expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors after 10 years there, opened the seals of containers that house some 8,000 spent plutonium fuel rods and moved to restart a five-megawatt reactor that the Clinton White House once considered bombing. Kicking out international observers has long been viewed by the United States as a "red line" that North Korea could not cross without major repercussions -- since it means the plutonium can no longer be accounted for.
An effective solution?
While states in Asia desire a peaceful settlement with North Korea, just what an effective diplomatic solution with that country will look like is vexingly unclear, experts say. Several days ago, for example, the United States seemed to initiate a policy of economic sanctions and "tailored containment" toward the North. Yet after South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and incoming President Roh Moo-hyun issued a sharp public disagreement with Washington, it seem that even the Bush team is backing off that plan.
Clarity on the diplomatic path out of this crisis may emerge in the coming week. Nuclear inspectors will gather Monday for an emergency meeting with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency board. That is likely to be followed by a U.N. Security Council meeting, and meetings in Washington between U.S., Japanese and South Korean officials. After that, U.S. envoy James Kelly is scheduled to depart for South Korea.
Situation for talks
Currently, North Korea wants to talk only with Washington. South Korea, ironically, wants to talk only with North Korea, to restart its "sunshine policy" of engagement. And the United States, meanwhile, wants to talk with the North only through a third party in Seoul.
Washington sources say Bush began to rule out a military solution after talking with South Korean President Kim about the damage the North's conventional artillery and missiles could wreak on the capital of Seoul, only 30 miles from the demilitarized zone that have separated the sibling nations since 1954.
Diplomats from South Korea and China met in Beijing on Thursday and vowed to find a peaceful solution. Those two states are least likely to favor sanctions and isolation advocated by the Bush team to force the North to stop its various weapons programs, which include biological and chemical weapons, and advanced missile delivery systems.
For reasons of history, geography and current military ties, China has been looked to as a leading influence on Pyongyang. Chinese attitudes with the North are currently quite ambivalent. But, as with South Korea, China does not want North Korea to collapse or implode quickly -- something that would send millions of refugees to China and destabilize the peninsula.
Warmed to U.S.
Moreover, ties between China and the United States are relatively warm, following outgoing top leader President Jiang Zemin's trip to Crawford, Texas this fall.
Yet China has played its role with extreme caution, not prodding or offending Pyongyang in any significant way. "Everyone points to the Chinese as holding the main leverage," says James Mulvenon of Rand, a nonprofit research group in Washington.
"The Chinese now say they want to help us, but every time we need it, they can't, for one reason or another, provide it.
"I think it is wrong to expect the Chinese will enforce sanctions. That is not how they do business. The best thing the Chinese can do for us is, when the North Koreans come to them for aid and succor, they are met with silence. No hectoring, no lecturing -- just silence. That would send the most powerful message."