Story Source

With “major, major” confrontation jitters emanating from the White House and news breaking in Washington late Friday that North Korea attempted to test-fire yet another ballistic missile, the U.N. Security Council capped a month of high-stakes diplomacy with senior diplomats taking on the what-next-in-North-Korea debate.

Armed forces of the U.S., China, and South Korea are in the Korean Peninsula on heightened alert. Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley set the final Security Council meeting of the U.S. monthly rotation as president, to call in the diplomatic top guns. The hope, expressed in a note to the nations on the 15-member Council, was to get North Korea back to the bargaining table.

The U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson-chaired meeting Friday brought senior diplomats, illustrating the importance of the meeting: China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, as well as South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. Britain’s Boris Johnson and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov were there.

The invitation to attend the meeting, sent by Haley said, “the DPRK’s (North Korea) pursuit of weapons of mass destruction represents one of the gravest threats to international peace and security.”

Trump, Tillerson and Haley have been clear that they are leaning on China, the North’s key trading partner, to help deescalate the military confrontation and tamp down Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program. In 2016 alone, Haley’s note read, the DPRK conducted two nuclear tests and 24 ballistic missile launches, not including today’s failed test.

Trump warns that “major, major” conflict with North Korea possible https://t.co/DVEAAvySDM?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss pic.twitter.com/mjjnWt2S52

— The Hill (@thehill) April 28, 2017

As a sign of the new level of “brinksmanship” with North Korea, nations involved in the meetings had dozens of bilateral meetings at the sidelines of the Council at U.N. Headquarters and off campus.

At the Council, most of the speakers were in unity on the tightening of six U.N. sanctions resolutions. No new resolution was circulated.

Obvious though, to anyone who travels to North Korea, is that they have evaded the existing sanctions. The U.N. produced a report last month on the intricate network of subterfuge and fake financial organizations that allow North Korea to skirt the sanctions.

Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the meeting is important because China has a strong interest in keeping diplomacy over North Korea alive in the Council, particularly since Trump bypassed the Council in military strikes in Syria and Afghanistan: “In the past, Chinese and U.S. officials have negotiated the main points of resolutions on DPRK bilaterally, then got the wider Council to legitimize their positions.”

The Security Council, therefore, is key. After the last ballistic missile launch by North Korea, on April 15, the U.S. found itself in the unusual position of having to negotiate with Russia,  which objected to a press statement even though China agreed with the language of the proposed statement. On April 20, the Council did pass a statement condemning the launch and calling for “peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue” in a compromise.

#BREAKING: North Korea ballistic missile test fails: report https://t.co/7iHjTIvBd9?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss pic.twitter.com/u7BZLF75uX

— The Hill (@thehill) April 28, 2017

Stephen C. Schlesinger, a fellow at the Century Foundation and author of, “Act of Creation” about the founding of the U.N., said that Trump is “establishing a hardline pre-negotiating position in order to: (1) convince China to clamp down on the North Korean regime; (2) raise the ante for the North Koreans so they will delay another nuclear test; and, (3) lead to eventual negotiations with the regime.”

“We are not looking for a fight,” Haley has said several times in the past few weeks.

Tillerson reassured the North Korans on issues that clearly concern them: “Our goal is not regime change. Nor do we desire to threaten the North Korean people or destabilize the Asia Pacific region.”

He had a clearly defined vision: to fully implement U.N. sanctions, he called on countries to suspend or downgrade diplomatic relations; increase North Korea’s financial isolation; to suspend the flow of North Korean guest workers;  and, to impose bans on North Korean imports, and especially coal. 

But when it came time for China’s foreign minister to offer a vision, it was markedly different from the one of Washington. Wang said that China wants a denuclearized North Korea and echoed much of what Tillerson said about the dangers of escalation and the need to enforce existing sanctions.

The right choice, the simple choice Wang said, is the proposed “suspension for suspension” program in which North Korea would suspend its nuclear and ballistic missile activities and the U.S. and South Korea would suspend its military exercises.

Tillerson’s response was no-go: North Korea “must dismantle its nuclear missile programs” before “can even consider talks.”

Russia’s Gatilov was more antagonistic, calling the U.S. exercises “muscle flexing.”

North Korea was not at the meeting but their New York Mission released a statement saying that “the Trump administration is trying to bring the DPRK into submission by deploying nuclear aircraft carrier strike groups one after another to the waters off the Korean peninsula, but such kind of intimidation and blackmail can never frighten the DPRK.”

Tillerson told the Council that all options are on the table, including going it alone.

North Korea has perplexed U.S. presidents in the past, several of whom said that the status quo could not stand. The Trump administration, which made some strides with China, may be realizing that while they may be able to get talks on the table, Kim Jong Un is more than a formidable — and erratic — adversary, who appears to want to keep his nuclear program. China’s help, clear today, will be limited.

Pamela Falk is a correspondent for CBS News TV & Radio, a foreign affairs analyst & U.N. resident correspondent, and a former staff director of a subcommittee of the House of Representatives. She holds a J.D. from Columbia School of Law. She can be reached at @PamelaFalk.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

The post Opinion: North Korea attempts missile launch as Trump learns China's help doesn't come cheap appeared first on shakabot.