Foreign and Military Affairs

Sanctions not helpful for DPRK negotiations

By Ai Yang (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-01 10:21

BEIJING - The latest round of sanctions the US has slapped on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are having little effect, while the stalled Six-Party Talks do not have sufficient momentum to restart negotiations, according to Chinese analysts.

The US government said on Monday it has imposed additional sanctions on the DPRK under which the assets of four individuals and eight entities are frozen, under suspicion of being involved in illicit activities including the procurement of arms, Japan's Kyodo News reported.

"The sanctions themselves will not influence the nation much," said Wang Fan, a Korean studies expert at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. "But playing hardball is America's usual strategy (and) in this way, they position themselves at an advantaged ground for future negotiations."

Under a new Executive Order signed by US President Barack Obama on Monday, one individual and three entities are newly targeted, while three other individuals and five entities were listed for sanctions based on the existing Executive Order of June 2005, Kyodo said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested these sanctions were on the way during trip to Seoul in July. However, the announcement of the sanctions and a detailed list of what they included emerged only on Tuesday - less than a week after Aijalon Gomes, an American citizen jailed in Pyongyang since April for trespassing on the DPRK was freed by officials there.

Philip Crowley, the US State Department spokesman, conceded that the sanctions were delayed in time to allow for Gomes's release after the intervention by former US president Jimmy Carter who journeyed to Pyongyang as a civilian.

"We did not want to do anything that would complicate that effort," he told reporters. However Crowley added that no substantive changes were made to the sanctions regimen as a direct result of the release.

The US maintains a provocative attitude in approaching the DPRK, Wang said. "Washington's gesture (was) rather unfriendly toward Pyongyang, and slows the process of restarting the Six-Party Talks," he added.

During his unofficial five-day visit to China which ended on Monday, DPRK top leader Kim Jong-Il told his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao that his country is committed to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and that Pyongyang does not wish to see tensions escalate.

But the US remains largely unsatisfied with DPRK officials, despite their stated desire to see an early resumption of the stalled talks, say analysts.

Washington officials for their part say they "remain prepared" to re-engage with Pyongyang, but that the DPRK, in return, must first prove such engagement would be "fruitful".

Gomes's release on the other hand, was not enough to be regarded as an act of peace, as it doesn't "allay the broader concerns" of Washington, Crowley said.

The DPRK unilaterally pulled out of the Six-Party Talks in April of 2009, which also included the Republic of Korea (ROK), the US, China, Russia and Japan.

In March of this year confidence between Pyongyang and Washington suffered a blow when the Americans and Seoul officials accused the DPRK of torpedoing and sinking an ROK warship.

Pyongyang has denied any involvement in the incident.

Meanwhile, according to The New York Times, many voices within the US political establishment are also urging for more concrete and proactive negotiations with the DPRK.

Some foreign policy experts and former government officials, moreover, believe it is time for the US to "resume some form of contact" with Kim, even as Clinton has already expressed impatience with the current policy based on "ever more stringent economic sanctions and joint American-South Korean naval exercises", the Times reported.

Jin Canrong, the associate dean of the School of International Relations at the Beijing-based Renmin University of China spoke of "two different voices" in the US right now.

"The conservative ones want more pressure," he said, "whereas the realistic ones want more engagement."

Wu Dawei, China's special representative on Korean Peninsula affairs and chair of the Six-Party Talks, said on Tuesday that Beijing plans to put forth a fresh proposal for talk resumption.

It is a badly needed one, he noted.

"The Obama administration is ignoring the DPRK," said Jin. "It would not react to the DPRK's goodwill gesture."

While Seoul has announced that the implementation of the new financial sanctions regime on the DPRK is "completed", the ROK is also offering a large-scale aid package of $8.4 million to its northern neighbor after it had been hit hard by floods over the past two months.

ROK President Lee Myung-bak has also characterized the recent contact between Beijing and the DPRK as "positive".

Yang Jing and Wang Haishan contributed to the story.