Pritchard foresees revised six-party talks to woo reluctant N. Korea

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, May 26 (Yonhap) -- The former U.S. point man on North Korea, Jack
Pritchard, forecast Tuesday that the United States and China will try to revive
the deadlocked six-party talks in a "revised" fashion in the coming months to try
and negotiate with Pyongyang.
"In the next few months, the Chinese and the U.S. will particularly try to
convince North Korea to come to a revised six-party talks," Pritchard, president
of the Korea Economic Institute, told Yonhap News Agency in an interview. "It may
contain the same number of people, but the agenda and how we do things in that
multilateral forum will be different."
Pritchard's remarks come amid speculation that North Korea detonated a nuclear
device for the second time Monday in nearly three years, seen by many as an
attempt to win more concessions in future negotiations.
North Korea withdrew from the six-party talks and vowed to enhance its nuclear
arsenal unless the U.N. Security Council apologizes for sanctioning the North for
its April 5 rocket launch, which Pyongyang insists orbited a satellite.
The security council is drafting a new resolution for further sanctions in
response to the nuclear test, an action banned by a previous resolution adopted
by the council after the North's nuclear and ballistic missile tests in 2006.
Pritchard said that he was "not convinced if North Korea will come back to the
six party talks" which have progressed sluggishly since their inauguration in
2003 without a major breakthrough, adding, "I do believe as of today the
six-party talks are essentially dead."
"Now we are going to revive a new organization that looks very much like the
six-party talks that has the same objective in terms of the denuclearization," he
said, without elaborating. "The ability to revive six-party talks in my opinion
really will be a test of the United States and others."
The North's nuclear detonation represents Pyongyang's desire to become a nuclear
weapons state regardless of the international community's concerns, he said.
"Unless something extraordinary occurs in its relationship with other countries,
it does not now have any intention of giving up its nuclear weapons."
North Korea, however, will find it difficult to gain recognition as a nuclear
power in the face of strong opposition from its biggest benefactor, China, as
well as the U.S, Pritchard added.
"A nuclear North Korea has disadvantages to China," he said. "There will be
continued tension and instability because no one else in the region or the world
is going to accept a nuclear North Korea."
Pritchard's remarks run against those made earlier by Daniel Blumenthal, a
resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who suggested that Obama
engage the North directly without China's involvement.
"Beijing is content to live with a nuclear and anti-Western North Korea,"
Blumenthal said. "While China fears a collapsed North that would flood its
struggling Northeast with refugees, it also fears a unified, democratic,
prosperous Korea allied with the United States. China wants a puppet state in
North Korea, which is why, far from joining in sanctions, it steadily increases
its economic investment there."
Suh Jae-jean, president of the Korea Institute for National Unification, told a
forum here recently that the North Koreans do not welcome China's involvement for
fear over its growing economic influence, which essentially translates into
enhanced political influence in the North.
Pritchard said he did not expect the Barack Obama administration to accept North
Korea as a nuclear power.
"We can't deal with them or even (look) down the future to solving other issues
in terms of replacement of the armistice or a permanent peace treaty and
normalization of relations between the U.S. and North Korea," he said. "None of
that can happen as long as North Korea retains their nuclear weapons capability."
The Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a formal peace treaty,
leaving the North and the U.S.-led U.N. coalition still technically at war.
Without its denuclearization, North Korea will "find it more and more difficult
to operate in the world community," he said. "It will be more and more difficult
to perform financial transactions to enter into contracts that have normal
relations with people. They will become more and more isolated to the detriment
of the survival of the country."
North Korea is different from Pakistan and India which have strategic importance
to the U.S. in terms of its war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said,
adding India also acts as regional power balance against China.
"North Korea would like to be Pakistan or India, being able to retain nuclear
weapons capability and have relationship with the U.S. That's not going to
happen," he said. "North Korea is a stand-alone country, (it) has no importance
to the U.S. We don't have to have a relationship with North Korea particularly if
they persist to have nuclear weapons."
hdh@yna.co.kr
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