North Korea calls UN resolution 'declaration of war'

The world set itself on a direct collision course with the unpredictable and hermetically sealed the communist regime of North Korea on Oct. 14, adopting a resolution at the UN Security Council demanding that it end its nuclear weapons program and desist from further testing. The adoption of the resolution by a vote of 15 to 0 triggered a dramatic walk-out from the council chamber by North Korea's envoy to the UN, Pak Gil Yon. He declared that, pushed by the US, the UN had taken a step that amounted to a "declaration of war" against his country. "It is gangster-like for the Security Council to have adopted today a coercive resolution while neglecting the threats and moves for sanctions and pressure of the United States," said Gil Yon. The North Korean representative also took care to blame the US for the Council's action and warned of unspoken consequences: "If the United States increases pressure on the Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, the DPRK will continue to take physical countermeasures considering it as a declaration of war." Gil Yon told the council that his country "totally rejects the unjustifiable resolution" and denounced the Security Council for sanctioning North Korea without addressing the threat that it felt the US posed to his country. North Korea would not "possess even a single nuke when it is no longer exposed to the US threat," Pak said. This new and dangerous phase of the crisis began on Oct. 9 when Pyongyang brashly announced that it had completed its first nuclear test in an underground facility, thus declaring itself as a member of the club of nations with nuclear weapons. In an unusual show of regional unity, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia have lined up to back the US-drafted measures, Resolution 1718. But differences of approach were becoming evident in the implementation of the punitive steps, which prohibit trade in any material that could be used in weapons of mass destruction, ban sales of heavy conventional weapons and luxury goods, and call for a freeze on all accounts related to Pyongyang's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. China called for calm and emphasized that the UN resolution did not permit military force. China wanted nothing in the resolution that could have led the US one day in the future to claim it had the authorization to invade or attack. Academics said Beijing is reluctant to check all cargo crossing its long land border with North Korea or to take any step that might lead to a collapse of its neighbor and an exodus of refugees. "China will carry out the decision of the security council," said Zhou Yongsheng, professor at China's Foreign Affairs University. "But full inspections along our land border are unrealistic." At China's insistence, the final text was diluted to merely request, rather than require, that countries aggressively inspect North Korean cargo. "China will implement this resolution, but it will not participate in those inspections," Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya said. "We strongly urge those who think it is necessary to do it with caution, because it could easily lead by one side or the other to a provocation of conflict. That would have serious implications for the region." China's reluctance to take part in inspections of North Korean cargo throws into doubt how effective the sanctions will be. China is North Korea's neighbor and provides about 70 percent of its oil and 40 percent of its food. John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, said China had a "heavy responsibility" to influence North Korea's behavior. As the North's major ally and supplier of crucial food and energy, if it were to cut that support, Bolton said, it "would be powerfully persuasive." Bolton also suggested to the council that North Korea be expelled from the United Nations. Japan unilaterally imposed some sanctions on Oct. 11, banning all North Korean imports and stopping its ships entering Japanese waters. South Korea promised to honor the UN resolution, but it seemed unlikely to scale back economic development projects. Russia said the sanctions should not be viewed as indefinite. Russian envoy Alexander Alexeyev said the North Koreans had told him they were not rejecting the negotiations. "The North Korean side repeatedly insisted that the... process should continue," Alexeyev said. Exactly how much North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, has to fear from the resolution is unclear, however. It attempts to isolate further a country that is already largely fenced off from the rest of the world socially, politically and economically. Bush refuses, blames Clinton-style diplomacy After North Korea's nuclear test, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged President Bush to consider bilateral negotiations, which Bush quickly rejected on Oct. 11. "We want to make sure that we solve this problem diplomatically," Bush said, repeating the word "diplomatically" seven more times and using the term "diplomacy" on an additional 10 occasions during a 62-minute news conference. But Bush struck a defensive tone in explaining his opposition to direct negotiations. Echoing comments by other Republicans in recent days, he cited the one-on-one approach to North Korea taken by former President Bill Clinton resulting in a 1994 agreement that collapsed in 2002, after Bush took office. "Bilateral relations didn't work," Bush said, although adding, "I appreciate the efforts of previous administrations." The 1994 agreement froze North Korea's plutonium activities and mothballed its nuclear plants, putting its nuclear program under international inspectors. In exchange, Washington agreed to provide fuel oil and build two light-water breeder reactors. In 2002, after Bush's inclusion of North Korea in his "axis of evil," North Korea admitted it was still working to develop nuclear weapons. A spokesman for Clinton responded that Republicans were attempting to "rewrite history." After the 1994 agreement, North Korea produced no nuclear weapons during Clinton's time in the White House; and the Clinton approach was endorsed by Colin L. Powell, then Bush's secretary of state, in 2001, said Ben Yarrow of the Clinton Foundation. "For eight years during the Clinton administration, there was no new plutonium production, no nuclear weapons tests and therefore no additional nuclear weapons developed on President Clinton's watch," Yarrow said. "The Clinton administration's approach has been turned on its head, and North Korea now has demonstrated its nuclear weapons capability to the world," Yarrow added. Conflict has deep roots Democrats and Republicans have been quick to use North Korea's nuclear test to benefit their own party in these final weeks of the congressional campaign, but a review of history shows that both sides have contributed to the current situation. There is more than 50 years of history to Pyongyang's attempt to gain a nuclear weapon, triggered in part by threats from Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower to end the Korean War. In 1950, when a reporter asked Truman whether he would use atomic bombs at a time when the war was going badly, the president said, "That includes every weapon we have." Three years later, Eisenhower made a veiled threat, saying he would "remove all restraints in our use of weapons" if the North Korean government did not negotiate in good faith an ending to the war. In 1957, the United States placed nuclear-tipped Matador missiles in South Korea, to be followed in later years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, by nuclear artillery, most of which was placed within miles of the demilitarized zone. It was not until President Jimmy Carter's administration, in the late 1970s, that the first steps were taken to remove some of the hundreds of nuclear weapons that the United States maintained in South Korea, a process that was not completed until 1991, under the first Bush administration. More recently, tensions escalated dramatically between the US and North Korea after Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address in which he labeled the nation one-third of a global "axis of evil," alongside Iraq and Iran. Later, in October 2002, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly confronted officials in Pyongyang with US evidence of the uranium project. North Korea admitted it was pursuing the program and said it would continue unless the US agreed to enter into bilateral talks to draft a non-aggression pact. The US has rejected all calls for such an agreement ever since. It is against that background that the North Korean nuclear program developed. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (CACNP) warned that the threat from North Korea will only continue to escalate unless the United States pursues a more effective and viable plan to engage North Korea in negotiations that will lead to North Korea abandoning its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Lt. General Gard (USA, Ret.), Senior Military Fellow at (CACNP), warned "It is high time the United States negotiate in good faith and put forward a serious proposal, that would include a non-aggression pact, a promise not to threaten the North Korean regime, and economic and energy incentives, in exchange for North Korea dismantling its nuclear weapon program and accepting intrusive inspections."