The Hindu : North Korea raises new rumpus

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 27, 2003

International

International

North Korea raises new rumpus

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE March 26. Virtually specialising in diplomatic brinkmanship, North Korea today threatened to unravel the Armistice Agreement which had brought the Korean War to a close nearly 50 years ago. Continuing to challenge the United States over its alleged plans to launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, the Kim Jong-il regime today notified the United Nations Command (UNC) at the truce village of Panmunjom that Pyongyang would not send its representatives to an armistice-related meeting of a routine kind.

In a message to the UNC Deputy Chief of Staff, James Soligan, North Korea's interlocutor, Ri Chan-bok, said: "We are not sending our representatives to the regular meeting of liaison officers at Panmunjeon, because it is meaningless for us to discuss with them when the U.S. forces continue to be arrogant''.

The threat to pull out of a truce-sustaining forum was punctuated by North Korea's parallel hints about its political compulsions to take a "new important measure'' concerning the Armistice Agreement itself.

According to an authentic version of Pyongyang's latest ultimatum to the UNC, North Korea said that it would be pointless to keep the truce "if the U.S. military continues to starkly violate the Armistice Agreement and brings the political situation on the Korean Peninsula closer to war''.

Cited in connection with the perceived futility of the truce process were the "repeated aerial espionage'' by the U.S. against the interests of North Korea and Washington's (alleged) step-by-step preparations for a pre-emptive strike against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (or the North).

Holding these alleged actions by the U.S. to be in violation of the Armistice Agreement, Pyongyang said that it might dissociate itself from the accord if Washington were to impose sanctions on the DPRK or take incremental steps towards a war with the North.

The DPRK's latest decision to risk a further deterioration in the strategic environment over the Korean Peninsula is directly linked to Pyongyang's `paranoia' that the U.S. would indeed attack the North. According to regional diplomatic observers, the North fears that it might come under attack, perhaps after the current Iraq crisis is over, despite Washington's assurances of peaceful intentions and its frequent affirmations of faith in a multilateral dialogue that would involve Japan as also South Korea besides China and Russia in addition to the U.S. and the DPRK.

On Iraq, China reaffirmed today its call for an early end to the U.S.-led military strike — a renewed indication by Beijing that it had shifted its position from that of an insistence on an immediate halt to the war. Meanwhile, the Iraqi embassy in Beijing today put out a statement designed to set the record straight regarding the U.S. claims about the progress of the current war.

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