Korean Peninsula Today, 22 July 2009

N. Korea says open to meeting U.S. in regional forum (Yonhap)

PHUKET – A delegation of five North Korean officials arrived here Tuesday to attend the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), leaving room for a surprise bilateral meeting with U.S. officials on the sidelines of this week's annual event.

When asked whether they will meet with the U.S. side, Ri Tong-il, director of the disarmament department at the North's foreign ministry, reportedly said "it will depend on the situation." Ri made the comments to a group of reporters during a flight from Bangkok to Phuket.

He apparently serves as spokesman for the delegation, headed by Amb. Pak Kun-gwang. Pak is a vice foreign minister-level official at Pyongyang's foreign ministry, according to the North's embassy in Bangkok. He has served as North Korea's ambassador to Namibia and several other African countries.

The North's officials, however, gave no comment at the Phuket airport as they were whisked away by a convoy of sedans upon arrival.

It remains unclear whether North Korea and the U.S. will have a bilateral meeting during the ARF, in which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will participate.

The communist nation did not send its Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun, dashing hopes for the first high-level meeting between the two sides since the Obama administration was launched early this year.

The North's decision to send a lower-level official as its chief representative to the ARF, an annual meeting of top diplomats from more than a dozen nations, disappointed host Thailand and other participants who had hoped for a breakthrough in stalled efforts to bring the North back to the negotiating table. This year's session is likely to focus on North Korea, Myanmar, and the latest bomb attacks on two U.S.-owned hotels in Jakarta.

The Thai government asked Pyongyang to send Foreign Minister Pak to the forum, saying it could provide a chance for Pak to explain his nation's recent actions, including a second nuclear test on May 25, and discuss future steps on the issue.

In response to media reports that the North is not sending its foreign minister to this year's ARF, the U.S. said earlier it has no plan for a separate meeting with the North Korean delegation.

Clinton also said North Koreans are "unruly teenagers," citing their second nuclear test in May and other provocative acts apparently aimed at grabbing attention.

"What we've seen is this constant demand for attention," Clinton said in an interview that aired on ABC's "Good Morning America" shortly before flying to Thailand from India.

"And maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention -- don't give it to them, they don't deserve it, they are acting out," she said.

Diplomatic sources, however, say U.S. officials may decide to meet the North Korean delegates here in an effort to win the release of two American journalists detained in North Korea.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee of the U.S. media group Current TV were arrested in March near the China-North Korea border while on a trip to report on North Korean defectors. They were convicted of "great crimes" and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

The ARF, one of the few international meetings in which the North participates, has in the past provided a chance for the two sides to have high-level meetings outside of the six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

In the previous session in Singapore last year, Pak had an unprecedented six-party meeting with his counterparts from other members of the talks -- South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.

In 2004, then North Korean Foreign Minister Paik Nam-sun had a 20-minute bilateral meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell during the ARF held in Jakarta.

North Korea has been sending its foreign minister to the ARF in recent years. In an unusual case, it sent Ho Jong, an ambassador-at-large, to a 2003 session in Cambodia amid Pyongyang's standoff with Washington. Ho is now Pyongyang's ambassador to Kuwait.

XXXXXXXXXX

Clinton says she will not talk to N. Koreans at ARF (Yonhap)

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she will not meet this week with North Korean officials on the sidelines of a regional security forum in Phuket, Thailand, instead urging North Korea to return to the six-party talks on ending its nuclear programs.

"We really don't have any intention of talking to them, at least I don't, because what we are interested in is North Korea coming back to the table and continuing the negotiation that will lead to a denuclearized Korean Peninsula," Clinton said in an interview with the Fox News Channel. "We've made that abundantly clear over and over again."

The North Korean delegation flew into the Thai resort island earlier in the day to attend the two-day ASEAN Regional Forum, a meeting of foreign ministers held each year by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. One of the North Korean delegates reportedly told journalists aboard the flight that a meeting with U.S. officials "depends on the situation."

Despite Clinton's remarks, speculation still lingers over the possibility of North Korea's head delegate, Ambassador Pak Kun-gwang, meeting with Clinton one-on-one at the behest of host nation Thailand or China, which hosts the six-party talks.

XXXXXXXXXX

No Five-party Talks on N. Korea Planned in ASEAN Events (Interfax-AVN)

MOSCOW – A five-party meeting on the North Korean problem in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' events has not been considered in any practical context, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

"The parties involved have been weighing various reset options in the current critical situation surrounding the talks on turning the Korean peninsula into a nuclear-free zone, including the proposal to hold talks between Russia, the United States, China, South Korea and Japan. But it has not been considered in any specific context," Nesterenko said.

The talks, conducted until the end of last year, were six-party talks, not 5 + 1, to say nothing of 'five against one" talks, he said.

"In principle, Russia is not against other formats within the six- party negotiations, on condition that they are transparent for other parities in the talks and supplement organically the six-nation process," he said.

XXXXXXXXXX

N. Korea fears pressure at meet (AFP)

PHUKET – NUCLEAR-ARMED North Korea on Tuesday expressed concerns that it will come under pressure at Asia's biggest annual security meeting here this week, a Thai official said.

North Korean ambassador-at-large Pak Kun-Gwang met Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya for a 30-minute meeting ahead of Thursday's Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Regional Forum, the official said.

Pyongyang's withdrawal from multilateral talks on its nuclear aims are expected to dominate the forum, which will also feature the other parties at the talks - the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

'North Korea expressed concerns that this forum will put pressure on them,' Chavanond Intarakomalyasut, the secretary to the Thai foreign minister, told reporters in the resort island of Phuket, the venue for the forum.

Mr Chavanond said Thailand's Kasit had assured the North Korean ambassador that the aim of the security meeting was to foster peace and friendship.

'The Thai minister has told them that North Korea should listen to the United States as President Barack Obama's government is new. He asked North Korea to look on the positive side,' he added.

North Korea's foreign minister has declined to attend the meeting, sending a five-member delegation including the ambassador to Phuket.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived in Thailand earlier on Tuesday, said that Washington was taking concerns about possible military cooperation between North Korea and military-ruled Myanmar 'very seriously.'

XXXXXXXXXX

Is Myanmar going nuclear? (Associated Press)

BANGKOK – The recent aborted voyage of a North Korean ship, photographs of massive tunnels and a top secret meeting have raised alarm bells that one of the world's poorest nations may be aspiring to join the nuclear club - with help from its friends in Pyongyang. No one expects military-run Myanmar, also known as Burma, to obtain an atomic bomb anytime soon, but experts have the Southeast Asian nation on their radar screen.

"There's suspicion that something is going on, and increasingly that cooperation with North Korea may have a nuclear undercurrent. We are very much looking into it," says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington, D.C. think tank.

The issue is expected to be discussed, at least on the sidelines, at this week's ASEAN Regional Forum, a major security conference hosted by Thailand. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with representatives from North Korea and Myanmar, will attend.

Alert signals sounded recently when a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, headed toward Myanmar with undisclosed cargo. Shadowed by the U.S. Navy, it reversed course and returned home earlier this month.

It is still not clear what was aboard. U.S. and South Korean officials suspected artillery and other non-nuclear arms, but one South Korean intelligence expert, citing satellite imagery, says the ship's mission appeared to be related to a Myanmar nuclear program and also carried Scud-type missiles.

The expert, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said North Korea is helping Myanmar set up uranium- and nuclear-related facilities, echoing similar reports that have long circulated in Myanmar's exile community and media.

Meanwhile, Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two Japanese nationals last month for allegedly trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Myanmar that could be used to develop missiles.

And a recent report from Washington-based Radio Free Asia and Myanmar exile media said senior Myanmar military officers made a top secret visit late last year to North Korea, where an agreement was concluded for greatly expanding cooperation to modernize Myanmar's military muscle, including the construction of underground installations. The military pact report has yet to be confirmed.

In June, photographs, video and reports showed as many as 800 tunnels, some of them vast, dug in Myanmar with North Korean assistance under an operation code-named "Tortoise Shells." The photos were reportedly taken between 2003 and 2006.

Thailand-based author Bertil Lintner is convinced of the authenticity of the photos, which he was the first to obtain. However, the purpose of the tunnel networks, many near the remote capital of Naypyitaw, remains a question mark.

"There is no doubt that the Burmese generals would like to have a bomb so that they could challenge the Americans and the rest of the world," says Lintner, who has written books on both Myanmar and North Korea. "But they must be decades away from acquiring anything that would even remotely resemble an atomic bomb."

David Mathieson of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, who monitors developments in Myanmar, says that while there's no firm evidence the generals are pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, "a swirl of circumstantial trends indicates something in the nuclear field is going on that definitely warrants closer scrutiny by the international community."

Albright says some of the suspicion stems from North Korea's nuclear cooperation with Syria, which now possesses a reactor. Syria had first approached the Russians, just as Myanmar did earlier, but both countries were rejected, so the Syrians turned to Pyongyang - a step Myanmar may also be taking.

Since the early 2000s, dissidents and defectors from Myanmar have talked of a "nuclear battalion," an atomic "Ayelar Project" working out of a disguised flour mill and two Pakistani scientists who fled to Myanmar following the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack providing assistance. They gave no detailed evidence.

Now a spokesman for the self-styled Myanmar government-in-exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, says that according to sources working with the dissident movement inside the Myanmar army, there are two heavily guarded buildings under construction "to hold nuclear reactors" in central Myanmar.

Villagers in the area have been displaced, said spokesman Zinn Lin.

Andrew Selth of Australia's Griffith University, who has monitored Myanmar's possible nuclear moves for a decade, says none of these reports has been substantiated and calls the issue an "information black hole."

He also says Western governments are cautious in their assessments, remembering the intelligence blunders regarding suspected weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

A U.S. State Department official, speaking on customary rules of anonymity, said he would not comment on intelligence-related matters such as nuclear proliferation.

"I don't want that to be seen as confirmation one way or the other. Obviously, any time that a country does business with North Korea we're going to watch to see what that is," the official said.

Alarm bells about Myanmar's aspirations have rung before. In 2007, Russia signed an agreement to establish a nuclear studies center in Myanmar, build a 10-megawatt nuclear research reactor for peaceful purposes and train several hundred technicians in its operation.

However, Russia's atomic agency Rosatom told The Associated Press recently that "there has been no movement whatsoever on this agreement with Burma ever since."

Even earlier, before the military seized power, Myanmar sought to develop nuclear energy, sending physicists to the United States and Britain for studies in the 1950s. The military government established a Department of Atomic Energy in 2001 under U Thaung, a known proponent of nuclear technology who currently heads the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Myanmar is a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and under a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, it is obligated to let the U.N. watchdog know at least six months in advance of operating a nuclear facility, agency spokesman Ayhan Evrensel said.

Evrensel said the Vienna-based IAEA has asked Myanmar to sign a so-called "additional protocol" that would allow agency experts to carry out unannounced inspections and lead to a broader flow of information about Myanmar's nuclear activities.

The regime has remained silent on whatever its plans may be. A Myanmar government spokesman did not respond to an e-mail asking about Russian and North Korean involvement in nuclear development.

In a rare comment from inside Myanmar, Chan Tun, former ambassador to North Korea turned democracy activist, told the Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine, "To put it plainly: Burma wants to get the technology to develop a nuclear bomb.

"However, I have to say that it is childish of the Burmese generals to dream about acquiring nuclear technology since they can't even provide regular electricity in Burma," the Myanmar exile publication quoted him last month as saying.

Some experts think the generals may be bluffing.

"I would think that it's quite possible Yangon would like to scare other countries or may feel that talking about developing nuclear technologies will give them more bargaining clout," said Cristina-Astrid Hansell at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "This is not unreasonable, given the payoffs North Korea has gotten for its nuclear program."