Biden reaffirms pledge to push ahead with sanctions

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, June 14 (Yonhap) -- The United States is determined to keep pressure
on North Korea with tougher sanctions to prevent the North from proliferating
nuclear weapons and missiles, Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday.

Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press, Biden said, "It is important that we make sure
those sanctions stick and those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or
importing weapons. This is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on."
He was discussing the resolution adopted by the U.N. Security Council Friday for
Pyongyang's nuclear test on May 25, the first of its kind since October 2006, to
impose financial sanctions and an overall arms embargo that includes search and
seizure of North Korean ships suspected of carrying illicit weapons banned under
the resolution.
Some doubt the viability of such seizures as China and Russia have insisted that
force should not be used in the process in international waters, where ships
cannot be interdicted under international law unless consent is given by the
vessel's flag state.
North Korea has responded strongly to the resolution, saying it will start
enriching uranium for production of more nuclear weapons. It was the first
acknowledgement by the reclusive communist state that has run a uranium program
aside from its plutonium-based nuclear reactor, which had been in the process of
being disabled under a six-party deal for the North's denuclearization.
North Korea had vehemently denied the existence of the uranium-based nuclear
program since late 2002, when the Bush administration scrapped a 1994 nuclear
deal with Pyongyang citing the uranium program.
David Straub, associate director of Korean Studies at the Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, said the North's "announcement
itself will not have a major impact."
"The United States already believed that North Korea was at least experimenting
with uranium enrichment," he said. "A significant concern is that North Korea and
countries such as Iran are sharing nuclear weapons technology."
Richard Bush, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, agreed.
"The dangers are somewhat greater, but this only confirms what many suspected,"
Bush said. "It's impossible to know how significant the capability is, so we
can't guess."
Pyongyang has also said it will consider any interdiction of it ships an act of
war and threatened a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.
Biden rebuffed North Korea's threats and reaffirmed Washington's intent to push
ahead with the sanctions.
"North Korea is a very destabilizing element in East Asia," he said, but added,
"There is a coalescing of that conclusion on the part of the Chinese, the
Russians, Japanese, South Koreans, Americans like never before."
The five countries he mentioned are all members of the six-party talks, along
with North Korea, aimed at the North's nuclear dismantlement, Pyongyang has said
will boycott the talks unless the U.N. apologizes for its condemnations of a
recent North Korean rocket launch.
Straub, former head of the Korea Desk at the U.S. State Department, said "The
prospects for North Korea returning to those talks any time soon are not good."
He added, however, "The other five will continue to support the Six-Party Talks
for a long time to come."
Bush was more pessimistic about North Korea returning to the nuclear talks. There
is "zero possibility for the foreseeable future," he said.
Biden's remarks follow similar ones by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
who said Saturday that Washington will "do all we can to prevent continued
proliferation."
Clinton also hailed the U.N. resolution as "a tremendous statement on behalf of
the world community that North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and the
capacity to deliver those weapons through missiles is not going to be accepted by
the neighbors as well as the greater international community."
North Korea's recent provocations are widely seen as an attempt by its leader Kim
Jong-il to make way for his third and youngest son, Jong-un, to consolidate power
following reports that the senior Kim is in failing health due to a stroke he
suffered last summer.
Biden would not speculate on Kim Jong-il's intentions.
"Whether this is about succession, wanting his son to succeed him. Whether or not
he's looking for respect. Whether or not he really wants a nuclear capability to
threaten the region. We can't guess his motives," he said. "We just have to deal
with the reality that a North Korea that is either proliferating weapons and or
missiles, or a North Korea that is using those weapons."
Bush, the Brookings expert, advised the Obama administration to have "measured
firmness, patience, and preparation for any violent episodes" from North Korea.
"They believe that nuclear weapons are the safest way to preserve their
security," he said. "Their hope of getting international approval as a weapons
state has been dashed."
Straub said the impoverished, communist North Korea opted to go nuclear for the
survival of their regime amid a tense rivalry with thriving South Korea.
"North Korean leaders realize that their domestic political situation and
long-term strategic situation -- the two are closely related -- are desperate,"
Straub said.
"They feel themselves in a long-term existential struggle with the Republic of
Korea, which is almost impossibly far ahead of North Korea in all areas,
economically, (technologically), politically, diplomatically, and in conventional
military terms," he said. "Thus, the North Korean leaders have reached for
nuclear weapons as a way they hope will counter outside pressures and bolster
domestic support."
hdh@yna.co.kr
(END)