Looke like the easy victory of American forces in Iraq, has had impact around the world. The message is now clear. Don’t mess with the US.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/5621120.htm
North Korea, Iran weigh changes in policies toward United States
Star News Services
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea and Iran – grouped with Iraq as an “axis of evil” by President Bush – suggested new interest Saturday in resolving issues with the United States.
As the war in Iraq winds down, North Korea and Iran have worried that they might be the next target of the United States.
In a policy shift, North Korea said Saturday that it would negotiate its nuclear program without sticking “to any particular dialogue format” if the United States changed its stance on the issue.
For six months North Korea has insisted on one-on-one talks with the United States. The United States has asserted that negotiations over the nuclear threat must involve North Korea’s neighbors: China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
In Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani expressed support Saturday for holding a referendum on restoring ties with the United States – a marked shift by the former president.
Rafsanjani openly has sided with hard-liners since stepping down in 1997 and still heads a powerful body that advises Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The shift by North Korea was expected to ease tension on the Korean Peninsula. Recent South Korea-U.S. war games and Washington’s decision to send additional long-range bombers to the region have stoked fears in North Korea of an imminent U.S. invasion.
The crisis erupted in October when U.S. officials said that North Korea admitted it had a clandestine nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States.
The United States and its allies stopped oil shipments to North Korea, which retaliated by moving to restart a nuclear plant and withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
On Saturday, KCNA, the North Korean Central News Agency, quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying that if the United States was “ready to make a bold switchover in its Korea policy for a settlement of the nuclear issue,” North Korea would “not stick to any particular dialogue format.”
“North Korea seems to be saying they are ready to try a multilateral format,” said Scott Snyder, author of Negotiating on the Edge, about North Korean negotiating tactics. “The problem is that, given the mood of the moment, can the Bush administration take yes for an answer?”
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Saturday: “We have noted that statement with interest, and we expect to follow up through the appropriate diplomatic channels.”
A senior White House official said last week that pressure had been exerted on North Korea through the Chinese, among others, and that the administration had expected – because China is the largest aid provider to North Korea – that the government of Kim Jong Il would be likely to respond.
As recently as Friday, however, American officials said there still was activity at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, although no evidence that North Korea had begun converting its 8,000 nuclear fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium.
North Korea’s shift may be a result of such diplomatic pressure from Russia and China, analysts said. On Wednesday, both nations, historic allies of North Korea, blocked the adoption in the U.N. Security Council of any statement critical of North Korea’s nuclear program.
On Friday, however, a top Russian official said that Moscow would reconsider its longstanding policy of opposing international sanctions against North Korea if the country developed nuclear arms.
South Korea’s new president, Roh Moo-hyun, is preparing for a series of trips to countries concerned about North Korea’s nuclear program.
With the Iraq war drawing to a conclusion far faster than many people in South Korea expected, Roh is advancing his trip to Washington by 10 days, arriving in mid-May. After visiting the United States, he plans to travel to China, Russia and Japan, he announced Saturday.
North Korea is petrified by the rapid U.S. victory in Iraq, Roh said Friday in an interview with The Washington Post.
In a nation littered with statues of Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, there have been daily references in the news media to the attack on Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq.
“Allowing inspections and disarming ourselves are like taking off our pants,” North Korea’s state-run Central TV said Friday. “The United States’ sinister design is not in inspections themselves but in using them to spread rumors of weapons of mass destruction and find an excuse for armed intervention.”
In Iran, Rafsanjani and his fellow hard-liners nervously have been watching U.S.-led forces take control of Iraq.
Rafsanjani said Saturday that “the problem of Iran-U.S. relations” should be resolved, either through a referendum or through a decision by the advisory body, the Expediency Council.
Either way, the final decision would have to be confirmed by Khamenei, the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Rafsanjani as saying.
Khamenei, who has backed the hard-liners who control most levers of government, has repeatedly rejected as “treason and stupidity” any talk about restoring ties with Washington, which were cut when militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
With polls showing greater public support for dialogue with the United States, reformists have been pushing for the question to be decided by referendum.
Reformers seeking political and social change in Iran’s Islamic government have been locked in a power struggle with hard-liners who control the judiciary, the military and powerful unelected government bodies. Reformers have the support of Rafsanjani’s successor, President Mohammad Khatami.
Iran’s leaders are in a heated debate over how to deal with the U.S. success in shattering Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Besides fearing that Iran could be next on America’s target list, Iran is concerned over finding itself squeezed by increased American power in the region, with pro-U.S. governments in Iraq to its west and Afghanistan to its east.
More than 200 political activists signed a petition calling on the hard-line judiciary to release all political prisoners, lift the closure of newspapers, and stop arbitrary disqualification of candidates in general elections as a way to avoid Iraq’s fate, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported Saturday.
“The way to avoid serious foreign threats, nullify the subject of foreign intervention and get out of the current (political) deadlock is to remove the obstacles in the way of national demands,” IRNA quoted the petition as saying.
With such intense hard-line opposition to opening up to Washington, Khatami has stopped short of backing reformist calls for a referendum, calling instead for an unofficial dialogue.
Rafsanjani is the highest-ranking official to suggest the referendum idea, and he appeared to be floating a trial balloon to gauge the reaction of his hard-line allies.
A poll conducted last year for a parliamentary committee showed 74 percent of Tehran residents in favor of dialogue with America. An enraged judiciary charged three prominent pollsters with selling classified information to institutes with alleged links to the CIA.
The New York Times and The Associated Press contributed to this report