N. Korea renews nuclear warning in a pressure tactic for dialogue: analysts

(ATTN: RECASTS headline, lead, UPDATES throughout with more analysis)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Sept. 4 (Yonhap) -- Defying international sanctions against its nuclear
drive, North Korea has vowed to further its uranium enrichment program to build
atomic weapons, but its measured language revealed its true agenda again --
extracting bilateral actions from the United States, analysts said Friday.
In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, North Korea said its experimental
uranium enrichment program, an alternative route to building nuclear weapons in
addition to its plutonium-based one, has "successfully" entered into "completion
phase." It also said plutonium obtained from reprocessing spent fuel rods is
"being weaponized."
The warnings came just hours before Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special
representative on North Korea policy, was to arrive in Seoul during his
three-nation Asia tour to discuss North Korea issues.
"This is a time-honored North Korean pattern, asking 'Are you going to let us do
the enrichment or settle this through negotiation,'" Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea
studies professor at Dongguk University, said.
The warnings were largely a renewal of a statement North Korea issued in June.
Pyongyang said then it would begin enriching uranium and extracting plutonium at
its Yongbyon nuclear complex in protest to the U.N. Security Council's resolution
that punished its nuclear test in May with sanctions limiting cash flows into the
country.
"When its verbal warning brings nothing, the North usually goes into action. Now
is the verbal stage, and North Korea will see how the related countries respond,"
Koh said.
Washington insists it won't engage North Korea bilaterally until the latter
returns to the six-party nuclear talks that also involve South Korea, China,
Japan and Russia. The U.S. support for the international sanctions on the North
also remains steady despite a series of conciliatory moves North Korea has taken
toward the U.S. and South Korea.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korea Studies in Seoul, said
the letter to the U.N. should be seen as more of an appeal for dialogue than a
provocative warning. The letter was sent as a response to the U.N. sanctions
committee, which had inquired over the country's arms shipment seized by the
United Arab Emirates last month. The North Korean vessel was en route to Iran.
Also, the letter used a measured language that underscored the need for dialogue,
and it was publicized by North Korean media hours before Bosworth's arrival in
Seoul, Yang noted.
"Rather than a warning, it's a manifestation of the North Korean position -- the
U.N. resolution is fundamentally wrong, but why us?" Yang said.
"It is saying North Korea-U.S. direct talks will cut corners, but if the U.S.
keeps on beating around the bush, it will have to take the path toward stronger
nuclear deterrence," he said.
In what appeared to be wooing gestures toward Seoul and Washington, Pyongyang
recently made a dramatic turnaround in its diplomacy. During just a month's
period in August, North Korea released detained South Korean and American
citizens, restored stalled inter-Korean ventures and sent a delegation to Seoul
to pay condolences to late former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.
South Korea downplayed the conciliatory steps as "tactical" rather than fundamental.
U.N. sanctions were taking a toll on North Korea's ongoing economic drive,
experts say. With arms trade now banned under the U.N. resolution 1874, North
Korea is now left with few sources of cash income to buttress its campaign to
build a "great, prosperous and powerful nation" by 2012. The target year is the
birth centennial of North Korean late founder Kim Il-sung and when the current
leader, Kim Jong-il, turns 70.
Kim, who reportedly suffered a stroke last year, is believed to have named his
third and youngest son, Jong-un, as his successor.
David Straub, a former U.S. State Department official who accompanied former U.S.
President Bill Clinton on his trip to Pyongyang last month, saw a tough road
ahead in the nuclear standoff.
"The DPRK's most recent conciliatory steps may very well be nothing more than yet
another 'charm offensive' intended to deflect international pressure to abandon
its nuclear weapons," Straub said in a commentary published in Seoul's Korea
Focus this week.
"For that reason, the Obama administration insists that it will not support an
easing of sanctions until the DPRK is clearly on the path of denuclearization,"
he said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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