#7 - RW 263
Asia Times
June 25, 2003
Russia's lost Korean opportunity
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - Despite having been put on the sidelines over Pyongyang's nuclear issue, Russia is still keen to demonstrate that it has sufficient influence to help ease tensions over North Korea and its nuclear ambitions.

Russia is ready to host "any meetings and talks, to help in any form so as to normalize the situation" around North Korea, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in a British Broadcasting Corp interview on Sunday. "It is very sensitive issue for Russia due to proximity to Russian border," he said.

However, the Russia leader argued that Pyongyang was unlikely to draft any aggressive plans. "North Korea is now in such a state that I do not have any reasons to believe that this country has any aggressive intentions."

Addressing an annual press conference last Friday, Putin also urged providing Pyongyang with guarantees of "non-aggression". He also said all interested parties, including South Korea, Japan, China, the United States and Russia, should take part in solving the controversy over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

In a small but symbolic development, on Tuesday construction of a Russian Orthodox church started in downtown Pyongyang. Russia's ambassador to North Korea, Andrei Karlov, reportedly commented that a return of the Russian Orthodox faith to that country was of "great importance for developing relations between Russian and [North Korea]". Reportedly, the idea to build an Orthodox church in Pyongyang occurred to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during his rail trip to Russia in 2001.

Moreover, it has been reported that last month Kim sent a letter to Putin seeking his help in breaking the stalemate in the talks with the United States over the nuclear crisis.

Putin, who is keen to boost Russia's profile in East Asia, has sought a greater role in trying to resolve the dispute on the Korean Peninsula. When he and Chinese President Hu Jintao met in Moscow on May 27, they declared that the use of force to resolve Washington's standoff with North Korea would be "unacceptable".

With a backdrop of Moscow's once-close ties with Pyongyang, supportive pronouncements by Putin may have raised hopes that Russia was about to use its much-heralded leverage power with North Korea.

Russia was clearly sidelined when North Korea, the United States and China held talks on the nuclear crisis in Beijing in April. Washington has reportedly declined Pyongyang's offer of compromise in exchange for guarantees of its survival, as well as economic help. China has been demanding that no nuclear weapons should exist on the Korean Peninsula. Subsequently, no apparent progress was made.

Russia's absence from the April talks has been explained as a consequence of Moscow's flawed mediation attempts. In January, Putin sent a special envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, to China, North Korea and the United States in an effort to defuse international concerns over Pyongyang's nuclear threats. However, Losyukov's planned US trip failed to materialize, indicating that Russian mediation services were not needed in Washington.

Subsequently, even Russian media started questioning the Kremlin's ability to deal with Pyongyang. This month, the influential Kommersant daily commented that "Washington was pushing Russia out of the Korean Peninsula", as Russia was unlikely to join multilateral talks on North Korea in July or August. The daily also commented that Moscow had made a mistake when Losyukov unsuccessfully tried to become a mediator between Washington and Pyongyang.

According to Kommersant, Russia's talk about multilateral security guarantees merely sent a wrong signal to Pyongyang and then North Koreans intensified their nuclear blackmail. In the wake of Losyukov's failure, Russia lost its say in Korean affairs, the daily wrote. Despite organizing two rail trips for Kim, Russia has no way to influence Pyongyang, Kommersant wrote.

Not surprisingly, Losyukov strongly dismissed these claims. "No issues relative to North Korean can be solved without Russia, it is obvious," Losyukov told journalists in Moscow. "Only those who do not know anything about the process of Korean settlement and Russia's role can claim that Russia is being pushed out of this process," Losyukov stated. "Russia is taking an active part in this process by maintaining dialogue with North Korean leadership," he added without revealing any concrete details.

Losyukov stated that the crisis over North Korea's resumption of its nuclear program is primarily a dispute between North Korea and the United States. He conceded that the situation around North Korea has been deteriorating mainly because of the continued lack of consensus between Washington and Pyongyang. Losyukov also stated that Moscow backed the trilateral format of talks among the US, North Korea and China.

Therefore, the Kremlin pledged to host talks to normalize the situation around North Korea. However, Moscow declined to back a similar offer by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to host direct talks between the US and North Korean representatives. "This initiative will not be developed," Losyukov stated on June 11.

The Soviet Union was a close ally of reclusive North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, which resulted in the division of the peninsula between the communist North and the US-backed South. Yet relations between Moscow and Pyongyang have been less cordial since the 1991 collapse of Soviet rule and Russia's turbulent transition to the market economy.

Russia, North Korea's neighbor thanks to a narrow land border near Vladivostok, has sharply downgraded its ties with that country in the past decade. In turn, there has been a corresponding increase in Russian trade links with South Korea, which is still technically at war with North Korea.

Moscow and Pyongyang have signed a new bilateral treaty to replace an obsolete Soviet-era accord in place since 1961. However, bilateral annual trade turnover has been below US$100 million for the past few years. The decline has been blamed mainly on North Korea's economic crisis and its unpaid debts to Russia.

It has been argued that Russia's failure to join talks on North Korea next month or in August may well spark a new wave of realism in Moscow, after the initial enthusiasm prompted by the world's expectation that Russia could play a major role in defusing the crisis subsided. After all, Beijing has greater potential to influence Pyongyang, China having long ago displaced Russia as North Korea's main trade partner and interlocutor.

Russia has another good reason to rethink its proactive approach to North Korea. The last time Russia tried its hand at negotiating a strategic agreement with Kim Jong-il, in 2000, it turned into a fiasco. First, it was announced in Moscow that North Korea had agreed to give up its ballistic-rocket program in exchange for Russia's launching of civilian satellites into space. And then it turned out that it was a joke by Kim. Hence circumstantial evidence arguably indicates that Russia does not really have a firm grip on the degree of its ability to influence North Korea.

CDI Russia Weekly #263 ~ Contents  •  Next