Global Policy Forum

By Paul Eckert

South Korea, underscoring differences with the United States, said on Monday that pressure and isolation would not persuade communist North Korea to halt its nuclear brinkmanship. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, speaking ahead of the departure of international arms inspectors kicked out of North Korea, said that dialogue was the only option. The United States has called for economic sanctions.

Seoul also announced a flurry of diplomacy to ward off the crisis, triggered by the inspectors' expulsion. Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik was heading to Beijing later this week and Vice-Minister Kim Hang-kyung travels to Moscow the following week.

"Pressure and isolation have never been successful with communist countries -- Cuba is one example," Kim told his cabinet, according to remarks published by the presidential Blue House. "We will work closely with our allies to solve this Korean peninsula problem and we will firmly oppose North Korea's nuclear arms programme, but no matter what, we will pursue a peaceful solution," he said.

"We cannot go to war with North Korea and we can't go back to the Cold War system and extreme confrontation." Pyongyang last week disabled U.N. monitoring devices at a nuclear plant that could produce weapons-grade plutonium -- part of a programme that might have already produced one or two atomic bombs. Russia on Monday denounced the expulsion of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and urged North Korea to stick to international agreements.

"Pyongyang's decisions to expel IAEA inspectors and prepare the resumption of unmonitored work on its nuclear energy complex cannot help but provoke regret," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in a statement.

"North Korea should strictly observe all its corresponding international obligations." He urged all parties involved to keep up a dialogue and stick to a 1994 deal which promised North Korea deliveries of fuel oil and the construction of proliferation-proof reactors in exchange for Pyongyang freezing its nuclear programme.

Washington has said it will not launch a pre-emptive attack on North Korea, a nation which President George W. Bush has bracketed in an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran, but has said it will ask its allies and the United Nations to support sanctions. It has also talked of blocking missile shipments to ensure North Korea does not raise revenue from proliferation.

"We are not planning a pre-emptive strike," Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC television. "The United States has a full range of capabilities -- political, economic, diplomatic and, yes, military. But we are not trying to create a crisis atmosphere by threatening North Korea."

RESOLUTION 'POSSIBLE'

Powell's words made headlines in South Korea, but did little to calm worries that have roiled Seoul's financial markets since last week. The won currency traded weaker and Seoul's main stock index closed down 4.5 percent on Monday, the year's last trading day. North Korea has called sanctions tantamount to war and vowed not to bow to U.S. pressure. But Pyongyang said on Sunday a peaceful resolution would be possible if Washington guaranteed North Korea's security with a non-aggression pact.

"It is quite self-evident that dialogue is impossible without sitting face to face and a peaceful settlement of the issue would be unthinkable without dialogue," a North Korean foreign ministry statement said.

Powell ruled out immediate talks with the North Koreans, arguing that would reward Pyongyang for violating international agreements. While Seoul sought support from North Korea's traditional backers, it also expected to discuss strategy with its allies Japan and the United States in talks in Washington next week, a ministry official said.

The foreign ministers of China and South Korea talked by telephone on Saturday, agreeing to seek a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue through dialogue, China's state media said. President Kim will hand over power in February to President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, who has vowed to carry on Kim's "sunshine policy" of aid and dialogue with the North.

South Korea is loath to drive North Korea into a corner because Pyongyang has deployed the bulk of its 1.1-million-strong army, the world's fifth largest, just across their common border. South Korea's capital Seoul lies within range of the North's artillery.

On Friday, Pyongyang ordered the IAEA inspectors to leave, the latest escalation of a crisis analysts say is aimed at goading Washington and its allies into giving aid to the starving country of 22 million.

North Korea also announced it was firing up a reprocessing laboratory that could convert spent fuel into the plutonium needed for making nuclear bombs and had begun moving fresh fuel rods to the five-megawatt research reactor in Yongbyon, 88 km (55 miles) north of Pyongyang. The Bush administration, which is keen to keep its focus on Iraq, is pushing the U.N. Security Council to take up the crisis on the world's last Cold War frontier by January 12.

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