Op-Ed Contributor of the New York Times

Bomb North Korea, Before It’s Too Late.

By JEREMI SURI,
AUSTIN, Tex.

Published: April 12, 2013

SINCE February, the North Korean government has followed one threatening move with another. The spiral began with an underground nuclear test. Then the North declared the armistice that ended the Korean War invalid. The young dictator Kim Jong-un followed with a flurry of threats to attack civilian targets in South Korea, Japan and the United States.

Earlier this week, North Korea closed the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the only facility where citizens from North and South Korea work together. And now the North is openly threatening (and visibly preparing) to fire a mobile-launcher-based Musudan missile with a range that could reach many of the places Mr. Kim has menaced in his public statements. American intelligence agencies believe that North Korea is working to prepare even longer-range delivery systems to carry the nuclear warheads already in its arsenal.

The Korean crisis has now become a strategic threat to America’s core national interests. The best option is to destroy the North Korean missile on the ground before it is launched. The United States should use a precise airstrike to render the missile and its mobile launcher inoperable.

President Obama should state clearly and forthrightly that this is an act of self-defense in response to explicit threats from North Korea and clear evidence of a prepared weapon. He should give the leaders of South Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan advance notice before acting. And he should explain that this is a limited defensive strike on a military target — an operation that poses no threat to civilians — and that America does not intend to bring about regime change. The purpose is to neutralize a clear and present danger. That is all.

If North Korea is left to continue its threatening behavior, it will jeopardize the fragile economies of the region and it will encourage South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons — a policy already advocated by hawks in both countries. Most of all, North Korean threats will encourage isolated states across the world to follow suit. The Iranians are certainly watching. If North Korea can use its small nuclear arsenal to blackmail the region with impunity, why shouldn’t the mullahs in Tehran try to do the same?

The United States and its allies in East Asia have a legitimate right to self-defense and they have a deep interest in deterring future threats on this scale.

Thanks to precise satellite reconnaissance, striking the North Korean missile on the ground would be much easier than after it was launched. Since the United States cannot possibly know the missile’s trajectory before a launch, and Mr. Kim has said he is targeting America and its allies, we have reason to believe that civilians face serious danger.

Since a missile on the ground is an obvious and largely undefended target, we can be reasonably sure that a strike would destroy it and preserve regional stability and the safety of our allies. An American pre-emptive strike would also re-establish necessary red lines for North Korea and other countries in similar circumstances.

As President Xi Jinping of China stated earlier this month, “No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains.” By eliminating the most recent North Korean missile threat, the United States will reduce the threat posed by the North’s arsenal. The United States would also reassure everyone in the region, and those watching from other parts of the world, that although it is not seeking regime change, America and its allies will not be blackmailed by threatened missile launches.

The North Korean government would certainly view the American strike as a provocation, but it is unlikely that Mr. Kim would retaliate by attacking South Korea, as many fear. First, the Chinese government would do everything it could to prevent such a reaction. Even if they oppose an American strike, China’s leaders understand that a full-scale war would be far worse. Second, Mr. Kim would see in the American strike a renewed commitment to the defense of South Korea. Any attack on Seoul would be an act of suicide for him, and he knows that.

A war on the Korean Peninsula is unlikely after an American strike, but it is not inconceivable. The North Koreans might continue to escalate, and Mr. Kim might feel obligated to start a war to save face. Under these unfortunate circumstances, the United States and its allies would still be better off fighting a war with North Korea today, when the conflict could still be confined largely to the Korean Peninsula. As North Korea’s actions over the last two months have shown, Mr. Kim’s government is willing to escalate its threats much more rapidly than his father’s regime did. An unending crisis would merely postpone war to a later date, when the damage caused by North Korea would be even greater.

China’s role in a potential war on the Korean Peninsula is hard to predict. Beijing will continue to worry about the United States extending its influence up to the Chinese border. If armed hostilities erupt, President Obama should be prepared for direct and close consultations with Chinese leaders to negotiate a postwar settlement, in a larger multinational framework, that respects Beijing’s legitimate security interests in North Korea. The United States has no interest in occupying North Korea. The Chinese are unlikely to pursue an occupation of their own.

Destroying the North Korean missile before it is launched is the best of bad options on the Korean Peninsula. A prolonged crisis would undermine regional security and global efforts to stop nuclear proliferation. And a future war would be much worse. The most prudent move is to eliminate the most imminent military threat in self-defense, establish clear and reasonable limits on future belligerence, and maintain allied unity for stability — not forced regime change — in the region. This is the kind of pre-emptive action that would save lives and maybe even preserve the uneasy peace on the Korean Peninsula.

ULAN BATOR – After meeting with Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj and Prime Minister Norov Altankhuyag in Ulan Bator, Abe told a news conference the two sides will accelerate ongoing bilateral negotiations toward inking a free-trade accord. The two sides agreed to hold a third round of trade liberalization talks in the Mongolian capital from Tuesday.

“As Mongolia is rich in natural resources, Japan’s technological cooperation will lead to a win-win scenario for both countries,” Abe, the first Japanese prime minister to visit Mongolia in nearly seven years, said after the talks.

Abe also pushed the participation of Japanese companies in developing one of the largest coal deposits in the world, at the Tavan Tolgoi site in the Gobi Desert, during the talks. Japan hopes to secure cheaper supplies of natural resources abroad while its nuclear power stations remains stalled in view of the Fukushima disaster.

The suspension of atomic power plants will drive up utilities’ fuel costs for the operation of thermal power stations to a sky-high ¥3.2 trillion in fiscal 2012, which ends Sunday, far in excess of levels seen before the 2011 meltdowns crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant.

As well as its abundance of coal, Mongolia is also known for rich mineral resources such as gold, copper and uranium, while rare metals and rare earths deposits could also possibly be extracted.

Aside from economic issues, Tokyo also considers Mongolia an important ally from a diplomatic and security perspective since it has diplomatic relations with North Korea — unlike Japan, which has no formal ties with the communist country — and borders China to the south and Russia to the north.

On North Korea, Abe said the two countries had agreed to deal with its recent provocations to the international community in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions. Given Ulan Bator’s ties with Pyongyang, Abe was especially eager to secure its support in resolving the long-standing issue of the North’s abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and ’80s, government officials said.

Last November, Ulan Bator hosted the first talks between senior Japanese and North Korean officials since 2008 on the abduction issue.

Meanwhile, Japan, the largest donor to Mongolia, also intends to provide technical assistance to help the country cope with serious air pollution in the capital and assist the building of new transport infrastructure as a way of alleviating heavy traffic in and around it.

Japan was Mongolia’s fourth-largest trading partner last year, when the fast-growing country’s economy jumped 17.3 percent from a year earlier. China, Russia and the United States occupied the top three positions.

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ALSO:
Japan-Mexico summit eyed in April
Japan and Mexico are arranging to hold a summit for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Enrique Pena Nieto in Tokyo on April 8, when Japan will kick off its diplomatic campaign to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, government sources said.
[MORE] ->
www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/31/national/japan-mexico-summit-eyed-in-april/

——————
Last post: Japan’s outdated model is dead; long live the emerging vision
As of today, Roger Pulvers takes leave of Counterpoint, for which he has written weekly since its inception on April 3, 2005. In his final three columns, he set out to consider in turn Japan in the past, present and future. This is the concluding part of that trilogy.
[MORE] ->
www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/03/31/commentary/last-post-japans-outdated-model-is-dead-long-live-the-emerging-vision/

UNITED NATIONS, March 28 — The Arms Trade Treaty talks were to have concluded this afternoon; chairman Peter Woolcott has scheduled a press stakeout at 6 pm.

But as delegates continued milling around in Conference Room 1, Inner City Press observed the UN Television stakeout being taken apart at 6:10 pm.

By 6:45 pm, Iran, North Korea and Syria had formally objected, blocking consensus.

Mexico and some others argued that the ATT could still be adopted — without a vote — since there is no definition of consensus.

But Syria cited a definition, from the World Health Organization in 1987. Russia echoed that. Iran went further, saying that those trying to change the rules should “leave the building.”

Iran had earlier spoken up with sample objections; sources told Inner City Press their main issue was the inclusion of a reference to UN Security Council Chapter 7 sanctions, which they are under.

North Korea, too, is under them. So is Sudan, but several sources told Inner City Press Sudan does not want to stand alone, or even, as a source put it “be seen as one of the rogues.”

But there are principles, and the proponents of the ATT if they wanted consensus might have paid more attention to them.

As delegates milled around on the first floor, Inner City Press nearly alone staked out the second floor protocol room NLB-2109. Iran’s Permanent Representative came out with his Syrian counter-part Bashar Ja’afari. Soon thereafter, the objections were made, then the attempts to re-define consensus. Only at the UN.

—————–

  Privately a speaker said, we can’t just change the rules. Another said, the US pushed for the ATT to be under the rule of consensus, to be able to block it — then “pushed Iran to block it.”

Inner City Press asked the head of the US delegation about this; he did not disagree, including saying, it’s not a criticism. Alright then.

Update of 9:30 pm – We’d be told there would be a Woolcott stakeout, to get his side. But it’s canceled. To be fair we’ll make his argument: there was a list of speakers.

Update of 10:26 pm – after a long stand off resulting in the phrase, “there was no consensus and the draft decision was not adopted.” There’s laughter, cheering – and a cloud over the UN.

===========================================

General Assembly could vote on arms treaty next week.

The United Nations was prevented today by Syria, North Korea and Iran from adopting a proposed international arms treaty.

But the U.K., on behalf of multiple countries, sent the draft treaty to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, asking the General Assembly to vote quickly on it. “Most people in the world want regulation and those are the voices that need to be heard,” says Joanne Adamson, the chief U.K. delegate.

Even the United Nations Foundation (UNF) seems to have had enough of this UN. What will the US of President Obama say? Can the US oppose the Conventional Arms Control Treaty as previous US Administrations did?

—————————————

UK Statement on the Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty delivered by Ambassador Jo Adamson – 28 March 2013

A good strong treaty has been blocked by the DPRK, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Syria. But most people in most of the world want regulation and those other voices that need to be heard. So we have sent a text for decision by the United Nations General Assembly.

 This treaty will be the first international, legally binding agreement on the transfer of small arms and light-weapons, and the seven UN categories of conventional arms.

 It will have an explicit requirement for a national control system, with controls to apply to the broadest range of arms.

 It will prohibit exports that will be used for genocide, crimes against humanity, or a broad range of war crimes.

 It will have a mandatory requirement for arms exports – including ammunition, munitions, and military parts and components – to be assessed on the basis of criteria including peace and security, human rights, international humanitarian law, terrorism, which many had called for, and transnational organised crime.

 It will require mandatory refusals for transfers that pose unacceptable risks.

 It will have a requirement to take into account in export licensing decisions, the risks of serious acts of gender based violence, violence against women and children and corruption.

 It will have a requirement for states to regulate arms brokering.

 It will have mandatory record keeping and regular reporting on authorization.

 It will have regulation, where feasible, on imports, transit and transhipment.

It will have strong provisions to prevent diversion of weapons to illicit trafficking or use. And those provisions on diversions will have been negotiated, and I use the word negotiated, in a process which you established for us, the states, to take our own responsibility and to produce by consensus within the United Nations, which we cherish go dearly, a consensus outcome. That new article which we saw in the course of this conference was negotiated following many requests from countries who said that the 26^th of July text was not strong enough in this area. It was negotiated. It is in the treaty.

It contains provisions to help the treaty keep up to date with perhaps future, new types of weaponry, and to take our treaty, which we will have up to date and to make sure it is future-proofed. This will be a treaty on which we today can build. This is the sense of this room. This is why we are working right now to bring this treaty, which you gave us the opportunity to create, home. You gave us that opportunity. The overwhelming majority took that opportunity and negotiated this treaty.

Mr President,

I pay tribute to you. I cannot hold back my disappointment that we have been unable to take the opportunity to build on negotiations, which from my perspective, were rigorous, organised, transparent, and which involved Member States of the United Nations taking their responsibilities working on  texts late into the night and producing, with your help, an excellent text.

Mr President,

This is success deferred. This is not failure. We will have the Arms Trade Treaty. We will go to UNGA soon. I pay huge tribute to you for your fairness, for your rigor, for demanding high standards of us. That is the kind of Arms Trade we want to have. It is the same as the way you have run this conference.

I thank you, Mr President.

—————————————–

UK Press Release: Foreign Secretary remains determined to secure Arms Trade Treaty

Foreign Secretary signals UK’s continued commitment to securing an Arms Trade Treaty following failure to reach consensus in the United Nations.   

The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said:

“I am deeply disappointed that the negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty closed today without consensus.  After 7 years of intensive work, the international community had never had a better chance to agree a global, legally binding Treaty that would make the world a safer place.

“The UK has played a leading role and spared no effort to secure a Treaty which would be both strong and globally applied, based on consensus.

“We have come very close. It is disappointing that three countries blocked the historic agreement that lay within our reach.

“UK Ministers and officials in London, New York and in overseas capitals worked intensively to achieve the strongest possible outcome. I would like to thank everyone involved, including our close partners in civil society and industry, who have worked so hard together towards our common goal, and whose disappointment we share. 

“This Treaty is too important for us to let it end here. The overwhelming majority of the international community want this Treaty and we are determined to take it forward. 

“We will now focus our efforts on securing the adoption of the Treaty at the UN General Assembly as soon as possible. We will encourage the widest possible support for it, so that it delivers its promise of greater security, protecting human rights, challenging poverty and helping to secure sustainable development across the globe.

“When adopted, this will be the first international, legally-binding Treaty setting controls on the transfers of weapons. It will prohibit transfers that would be used for genocide or war crimes. Arms exports will be refused if they pose unacceptable risks.  Strong steps will be taken to prevent weapons being diverted into the illegal market. Authorisations of exports will be reported and arms brokering regulated.  It will also protect the legitimate trade in arms and promote international collaboration.

“The UK will not rest until we have secured an effective global Arms Trade Treaty.”

=============================

From the United States:  Statement by Secretary Kerry on the U.S. Support for the Arms Trade Treaty 0n 3-15-13

The United States looks forward to working with our international partners at the upcoming conference from March 18-28 to reach consensus on an Arms Trade Treaty that advances global security and respects national sovereignty and the legitimate arms trade. We supported and actively participated in negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty held at the United Nations in July 2012. Those negotiations made considerable progress, but ended before a treaty could be concluded. Accordingly, the United States supported a UN General Assembly resolution December 24, 2012 to convene the conference this month to build on those efforts.

The United States is steadfast in its commitment to achieve a strong and effective Arms Trade Treaty that helps address the adverse effects of the international arms trade on global peace and stability. An effective treaty that recognizes that each nation must tailor and enforce its own national export and import control mechanisms can generate the participation of a broad majority of states, help stem the illicit flow of conventional arms across international borders, and have important humanitarian benefits.

The United States could only be party to an Arms Trade Treaty that addresses international transfers of conventional arms solely and does not impose any new requirements on the U.S. domestic trade in firearms or on U.S. exporters. We will not support any treaty that would be inconsistent with U.S. law and the rights of American citizens under our Constitution, including the Second Amendment.

While the international arms trade affects every country, over one hundred states today do not have a system for control of international conventional arms transfers. We support a treaty that will bring all countries closer to existing international best practices, which we already observe, while preserving national decisions to transfer conventional arms responsibly. The international conventional arms trade is, and will continue to be, a legitimate commercial activity. But responsible nations should have in place control systems that will help reduce the risk that a transfer of conventional arms will be used to carry out the world’s worst crimes, including those involving terrorism, and serious human rights violations.

I wish the conference well and hope that we can reach consensus on a treaty that improves global security, advances our humanitarian goals, and enhances U.S. national security by encouraging all nations to establish meaningful systems and standards for regulating international arms transfers and ensuring respect for international law.

—————————

Statement of Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman

Arms Trade Treaty Conference

Morning Plenary Session

March 25, 2013

Thank you, Mr. President.  For years now, the United States has sought to achieve an Arms Trade Treaty that is strong, meaningful, and implementable — a treaty on which the United States could join consensus, a treaty the U.S. government could sign, and ultimately recommend to our Senate for ratification.  Thanks to you, Mr. President and your exceptional team, that goal is in sight and the U.S. will spare no effort to achieve it.

To give you examples of how hard we have worked with you and other delegations, let me mention Article 6, which was just mentioned by our friend from Norway.  Last week, we endorsed a suggestion by Japan, which we saw as a sound basis for negotiation, and which led to a discussion among the U.S. and many others that has made real progress towards addressing an important issue.  We will, of course, take this latest proposal by Norway into consideration.  Article 6 and 7 together are the heart of the treaty, a barrier against the misuse of conventional arms.

We have worked toward a compromise on Article 5.2 but none has been found.  In the end, we cannot accept language that is contrary to the plain meaning of the treaty.

My delegation came to this final UN conference prepared to work, as the General Assembly decided, on the basis of the July 26 text, a text that had its flaws but was the result of real, politically balanced compromise, a text that would both be meaningful and attract the widest possible consensus.  At that time, 90 countries said they could accept that text.  Since that time, your March 22 text is stronger, clearer, and more implementable.  I would hope all those who could accept the July text could accept this stronger one.

Let me remind you that this is not an arms control treaty, not a disarmament treaty — it is a trade treaty regulating a legitimate activity.  Allow me to comment on its two primary purposes.  A minimum requirement for national action is to regulate, in a fashion that will curb abuses against humanity and common sense, what is, nonetheless, a very legitimate international activity: the transfer of conventional arms to enhance, rather than undermine, peace and security — this is the heart of the regulation provisions.  This text contains strong language on these points that would bring the world closer to the standard of the United States and other major exporters.  On the second major goal, combating diversion, we are prepared to work on meaningful language either in a separate article or in clauses throughout the text.  Some diversion occurs between exporter and importer.  More diversion occurs after receipt by the importer.  To address all aspects of diversion, we are ready to work on meaningful language that expands international cooperation but recognize it must have language that respects domestic jurisdictions over domestic criminal activity.

Let’s be honest with each other; we are barely 48 hours away from a final text.  It is much too late to try to reopen some of the hard-fought compromises that were achieved last July — or to push the treaty into something new.  The U.S., like other delegations, has been constructive and leaned forward as much as we could, but trying to stretch that attitude into new topics at this point in time simply risks the rubber band snapping back and leaving us with a far less useful result than we already have seen.  So I would urge my colleagues to keep their focus on the object we share: ensuring that we produce and agree on, at the end of the week, an instrument that will optimize — not maximize, but optimize — the prospects for completing the full process of making an effective Arms Trade Treaty a working and living instrument.

Event at the Asia Society in New York – “The US and Asia in 2013: Challenges and Opportunities”

by Irith Jawetz at the Asia Society House on Park Avenue, New York City, Monday March 11, 2013.
Talk by Thomas Donilon, U.S. National Security Advisor on “The U.S. and Asia in 2013:  Challenges and Opportunities.”

Introductory remarks were by Ms. Henrietta Fore, Co-Chair of Asia Society and Chairman and CEO of Holsman International, a manufacturing, consulting and investment company.

She stressed the importance of the Series of talks at the Asia Society – “Beyond the Headlines” -  and said that the Asia Society shares views of cooperation, alliances, and links between the United States and Asia. There are many challenges in the relationship between the US and Asia, she said – especially when it comes to North Korea -  but the opportunities for cooperation outweigh the challenges, she sad. Her approach to foreign policy was a business woman line – the issue being that challenges and opportunities were understood in business terms.

Ms. Fore continued by introducing the speaker – Mr. Thomas Donilon.

Thomas Donilon is the new National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama. 
From 2009 to 2010, he served as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor.  He chaired the State Department’s transition effort in 2008.  Prior to this, he was a partner at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and served as a member of the firm’s global governing committee.  He has worked closely with and advised three U.S. Presidents since his first position at the White House working with President Carter. 

He served in the Clinton Administration as Assistant Secretary of State and Chief of Staff of the Department. In this capacity he was responsible for the development and implementation of the Department’s major policy initiatives, including NATO expansion, the Dayton Peace Accords, and the Middle East Peace process. He was awarded  the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award in November 1996. His interest in policy does not mean business first. What was he doing at Asia Society during this lunch-time break?

Mr. Donilon started his presentation by acknowledging his good friend Richard Holbrook who was a real “Asia hand” and credited him for dedicating all his efforts to peace and cooperation everywhere. Now – that was the answer to the question in my head. Mr. Danilon came to honor the departed Mr. Holbrook and not because of those present there.

Donilon gave a general review of the Obama Administration’s goals in Asia for his second term.

The world’s economic, political, and strategic center of gravity is shifting toward the Asia-Pacific.  Since its first days in office, the Obama administration has therefore pursued a rebalancing of foreign, economic and defense policy priorities toward the Asia Pacific. This reballance, according to National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, is working to “sustain a stable security environment and a regional order rooted in economic openness, peaceful resolution of disputes, democratic governance, and political freedom.” 

The United States has been over weighted in some area, i.,e. the Middle East and under weighted in other area, i.e. Asia – and the Obama Administration will make sure to strengthen the ties between the US and the Asia Pacific region.

He mentioned the friendship and cooperation with Japan’s new leadership, with China’s leadership, the friendship with India, and a solid commitment to the security of the Republic of Korea, and announced that the new woman President of the Republic of Korea, Ms. Park will visit the White House this coming May.

The challenges are mainly with North Korea. For 60 years the United States has protected the Republic of Korea and will not accept any nuclear programs in North Korea. There will be consequences if North Korea continues to pursue its nuclear goals. However, there will always be a window open for talks if North Korea changes its course. He brought as example the country of Myanmar with whom the US has now a good relationship. North Korea could take an example from Myanmar.

Mr. Donilon touched upon the good relationship between the US and India, Indonesia, a country that is personally close to Mr. Obama, and China. In relations to China he mentioned that a military dialogue is necessary, economic relations are opening up, however there are problems regarding the cyber security. The Internet has to be open, secure and reliable and there are still concerns in that field.

He further mentioned the TPP, Trans Pacific Partnership, – an organization which now has 11 members, but could be a podium for many countries to join and cooperate for free and open trade between the countries.

In conclusion, he again stressed that the ties between the United States and Asia are a very important subject in the Obama Administration.

Ms. Suzanne DiMaggio, Vice President of Global Policy Programs at Asia Society read a few questions, one relating to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As for Afghanistan Mr. Donilon stressed that the plan is still to have the Afghan forces take over the security of their country
with the US forces in an advisory capacity as of May 2013, and the full withdrawal of US troops from that country by September 31, 2014. The main goal is to defeat Al Qaeda and to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a future haven for terrorists.

As for Pakistan there have always been problems between the US and Pakistan especially after a crisis, i.e. the capture of Osama Bin Laden, but the US is committed to work through those problems and to ensure a stable Pakistan.

Mr. Tom Nagorski closed the session with a concluding remarks thanking Mr. Donilon for his excellent speech and also thanking him for his kind remarks regarding Richard Holbrook.

Tom Nagorski is Executive Vice President of the Asia Society since October 2012 following a three-decade career in journalism – having served most recently as Managing Editor for International Coverage of ABC News. Before that he was Foreign Editor for World News Tonight and a reporter and producer based in Russia, Germany and Thailand. He is the recipient of eight Emmy awards and the Dupont Award for excellence in International coverage as well as a fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation.
He looked like he understood why Mr. Donilon spent his time here and the fact that the business community ought to understand better the motives of an umbrella approach to foreign policy that comes with a reset away from the oil region.

September 10, 2012 – TODAY’S TOP STORIES of the JAPAN TIMES online:
=========================

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Noda speaks with China, South Korea leaders, seeks to view disputes from ‘broad viewpoints’
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told Chinese President Hu Jintao on Sunday that Tokyo wants to handle rising tensions between the two countries over the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea “from broad viewpoints.”
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[NATIONAL NEWS]
Clinton says U.S. will do what it can to calm East Asia territorial rows
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[NATIONAL NEWS]
Putin expresses desire to settle all pending issues with Japan
www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120910a7.html

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Japan seeks to resume talks with North Korea soon
www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120910a8.html

[NATIONAL NEWS]
New energy policy postponed amid lack of consensus
www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120910a9.html

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tens of thousands converge in Okinawa to protest Osprey deployment
Tens of thousands of people gathered for a rally in Okinawa on Sunday to protest against the planned deployment of U.S. Ospreys in the prefecture in the face of a series of problems involving the tilt-rotor military aircraft.
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LATEST OP-ED STORIES:

Tokyo-Seoul: enough is enough!

By RALPH COSSA

The political leadership in Tokyo and Seoul apparently has never learned a cardinal rule of diplomacy: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

–

Will ASEAN step up to try to bridge Japan-China rift?

By PAVIN CHACHAVALPONGPUN

ASEAN has assiduously sought to assuage tensions between Japan and China by giving both more room to maneuver so that each feels less victimized.

–

Nationalists making waves in Japan-China ties

By FRANK CHING

Although Japan and China re-established diplomatic ties 40 years ago, their territorial dispute over uninhabited islets has left them loath to celebrate.

———————————–

AND FROM CHINA DAILY:

From Hiroshima 1945 to Fukushima 2011 – it is “Cukooshima!”

Let me start by saying that this posting is not an expression of any arrow shooting at Japanese that acted for all those years against their best interests. Yes – but sorry – it was Cukoo.

It all started with Japan believing it can stop US expansion in East Asia, and Japan picking the losing side in WWII. This led to the dropping of two nuclear bombs over Japan. Then Japan decided to compete with the US economy and went the way of nuclear energy for peaceful use. Now we see that this was as disastrous as their first encounter with nuclear technology – but this time by their own choice.

We love Japan. For one – I spent three weeks in Kyoto in 1997 with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting that gave birth to the failed Kyoto Protocol. At that time I got to know the Kyoto – Nara – Osaka triangle. But this was not my only encounter with the Japanese. In effect, with my family, we spent two weeks staying with Japanese in their homes thanks to the Ryokan hospitality system, and we exchanged our time-share at the Krystal Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a week at the Resorpia Hakone Japanese Business Class Resort at Hakone, at the foot of the Fiji Mountain. We got to know two different levels which sandwich the Japanese society.

With this said – let me add that I write now from Vienna and that the Austrian people have voted down the opening of an atomic plant as they understood the terrible danger of living with an atomic monster-plant in your backyard. Austria has not even one nuclear plant but gets part of its electricity from the European grid that includes nuclear plants. The Austrians are thus not clean of nuclear energy either – this unless they disengage from the European grid and run their own separate grid for which they have enough hydro-power to provide over 80% of electricity need and could easily supply the remaining part with biomass, biofuels, solar and wind energy. Clearly no real need for nuclear power and the possibility to achieve this without empty posturing based on the truth that once in the past they voted down the opening of the Zwentendorf nuclear plant.

—————————

The Donella Meadows Archive – Voice of a Global Citizen – wrote:
Zwentendorf, a Nuclear Plant That Will Never Be Turned on.

On the bank of the Danube 20 miles northwest of Vienna stands a
completed nuclear power plant, loaded with fuel, ready to start up. It
has stood there, just so, for 9 years, while the Austrians argue about
what to do with it. The most popular plan is to turn it into a museum
for obsolete technology.

The plant, called Zwentendorf, was intended to be the first of six
Austrian nuclear plants. It was begun in 1970 and completed in 1978 at
a cost of 8 billion Austrian schillings — at present value about a
billion dollars. It is rated at 700 megawatts, about two-thirds the
size of Seabrook and Shoreham, two American nuclear plants that are
also ready to go and hotly contested.

“When Zwentendorf began, we didn’t know anything,” an Austrian
environmentalist told me. “Nuclear power sounded better to us than a
coal plant or another hydropower dam on the Danube. If only we had
known then what we know now.”

They know now that two of the four German plants with the same design
as Zwentendorf have been shut down permanently by mechanical problems.
They know now that Zwentendorf is located squarely on an earthquake
fault zone. And during a Danube flood, water seeped into its
containment vessel, so now they know that the groundwater is not
protected from contamination in case of a meltdown.

Furthermore Austria, like every other country with nuclear power, has
no plan for the disposal of nuclear waste. The original idea had been
to bury it in deep granite under the Alps. But the villages at the
chosen site vehemently rejected this plan, and by Austrian law a
locality cannot be forced to accept such an imposition from the
federal government. The Austrians offered the waste to Hungary, Egypt,
and China, but all refused. The Shah of Iran was eager to have it, but
then he fell from power. The Ayatullah wasn’t interested.

By the time Zwentendorf was finished, so many doubts had been raised
that the government was forced to hold a referendum to decide whether
to start the plant. During the weeks preceding the vote, the argument
raged — the same one that polarizes every country that permits public
discussion of nuclear power. People were told they had to choose
between progress and safety, between jobs and the environment, between
present brownouts and future contamination. Bruno Kreisky, then
Chancellor, declared Zwentendorf a top priority and appealed for a yes
vote. Austrians still do not agree whether he caused more
anti-Zwentendorf pro-Kreisky people to vote yes than he did
pro-Zwentendorf anti-Kreisky people to vote no.

At any rate, on November 5, l978, 50.5% of the voters said no to
Zwentendorf. The Austrian nuclear power program came to a halt.

This is part of an article from The Donella Meadows Archive, for
further information please contact Sustainability Institute, 3 Linden
Road, Hartland, VT 05048

Today – that is in 2011 – the Zwentendorf  facility serves as a source
of spare parts for the five German atomic power plant of the same
design, and is used for training purposes. Visits are possible only in
exceptional cases.

————————-

Austrians understand the pain of Japan and the papers are full with articles and letters regarding the nuclear events unfolding in Japan.

The PolitikHeute page of the popular free-of-charge Vienna Heute daily, March 18, 2011, has two out of the three letters from readers, dealing with the EU “Stress Tests for EU Nuclear plants, or the EU and the Atomic Power Plants (the German word AKW):

H. Fruhwirth from Hoenbach reminds us that it is Austrian Environment Minister Nikolas Berlakovich who suggested the stress-tests for all EU AKWs and thinks that had one done so with the Fukushima plants perhaps they would have been stopped before disaster stroke. The mentioned stress tests have already led Germany to announce the non renewal of the operating licenses for as many as 12 plants – this to take effect in a month or two.

Further, the letter points out that politicians, and those that favor nuclear power, finally were driven by what happened in Japan to the realization that humanity is helpless before environmental inputs.

S. Hauer writes a short note asking why the EU deals with crooked bananas and crooked cucumbers, but has no decisions regarding the AKWs, airplane accidents, acts of terror, earth-quakes – even though it is clear that 100% safety does not exist?

On the following page there is an article titled ANSWERS, by Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.

The Cardinal announces  that tonight, Friday March 18th, 7 pm, he will hold at the Stephansdom (clearly most important Cathedral in Austria) – a special service for Japan.

The Cardinal writes that the Fukushima events made him think these last days of his friend, a Chemist at the University of Bern, Switzerland, Professor Max Thuerkauf, who lost his position at the university because of his criticism of the technological insufficiencies of our times and warned of dangers even of the peaceful uses of nuclear power.  His words sound prophetic these days.

Back in 1984 he was saying that the nuclear power plants were just the tip of an iceberg – the development of technologies that were unsustainable. No engine is safe he was saying to those that argued that nuclear power plants are safe. He was noting that men build them, and use them, and we know that even the impossible can happen.

Thuerkauf  said that atomic energy is a fire that cannot be extinguished – surely not by closing a faucet. There is no material that can extinguish a fire that burns a thousand time brighter then the sun – the artificially created radioactivity.  Science has no means to bottle up this artificially created radioactivity will be here for eternity,  and the Cardinal calls us to reconsider what we are doing and look at what price the poor Japanese will pay for these activities.

—————————-

But I cannot leave it at this only. I feel I must make a further comment regarding the Japanese culture that bred the reality of people committing harakiri for some National purpose. Obviously, we had no admiration for those that sacrificed themselves for their emperor and we do not admire a Prime Minister who makes now an official visit to the shrine that sort off deifies their memory, but look now at the 50 workers that still busy themselves in the pit left by the explosions at the dying reactors of Fukushima. These people know they have little chance to survive. The head of the Japanese nuclear authority did not go to inspect the disaster – right on location. He must have had years ofd good pay and it is those workers that will be his sacrificial lambs. He is no better then the US bank-directors that raked in the profits  from the financial collapse in the US or the BP officials who watched the fouling up of the US Gulf. Neigh – the Japanese energy leaders might actually prove to be much worse then these other self-gratifiers.

Is above really incomprehensible if remembering that quite a few countries used to overload the UN with personnel as a convenient way to put their intelligence operatives within the borders of the US? In the days of the cold war these were mainly East-bloc operatives, today they can be various Middle Easterners and even plants from business interests.

The imagination can let you run wild and the host country may love to get more information of what some individuals with UN appointments do in their vastly available extra-time.

–

The US text we picked up says:

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 24 STATE 080163

NOFORN, SIPDIS, E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/31/2034

TAGS: PINR KSPR ECON KPKO KUNR

SUBJECT: (S) REPORTING AND COLLECTION NEEDS: THE UNITED NATIONS   REF: STATE 048489

Classified By: MICHAEL OWENS, ACTING DIR, INR/OPS. REASON: 1.4(C).

1. (S/NF) This cable provides the full text of the new National HUMINT Collection Directive (NHCD) on the United Nations (paragraph 3-end) as well as a request for continued DOS reporting of biographic information relating to the United Nations (paragraph 2).

…Reporting officers should include as much of the following information as possible when they have information relating to… credit card account numbers; frequent flyer account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.

…Information about current and future use of communications systems and technologies by officials or organizations, including cellular phone networks, mobile satellite phones, very small aperture terminals (VSAT), trunked and mobile radios, pagers, prepaid calling cards, firewalls, encryption, international connectivity, use of electronic data interchange, Voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP), Worldwide interoperability for microwave access (Wi-Max), and cable and fiber networks.

===============

Foreign Policy wrote about this:

WikiLeaks reveals vast U.S. information-gathering operation at the U.N.
Posted By Colum Lynch, Foreign Policy,  Sunday, November 28, 2010

The United States and other big powers have spied on the United
Nations as long as it has existed. But WikiLeaks’ disclosure Sunday of
the first batch of a massive trove of internal U.S. diplomatic cables
and directives gives a sense of how voracious America’s appetite for
information at the U.N. has grown.

A sweeping State Department directive — the 2009 National HUMINT
Collection Directive — instructs U.S. diplomats to collect
information on everything from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s
views on the Middle East to the frequent-flyer account numbers of
foreign delegates to the personal relationships between the U.N.
representatives in Iran and North Korea and top officials in those
governments. (HUMINT is shorthand for Human Intelligence Collection).

The directive, which was signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
identifies five top near-term intelligence priorities: Sudan, the
conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Somalia, Iran, and North Korea.
But the State Department also expressed interest in a wide spread of
other issues, from U.N. bureaucratic turf battles and revelations of
U.N. corruption to possible financial links between U.N. staff,
foreign governments, and terrorist organizations to voting practices
of third-world countries in the U.N.’s myriad committees.

Most of the directive’s information requests involve standard
diplomatic reporting about foreign governments’ positions. For
instance, it places a high priority on obtaining information about the
positions of the four other permanent members of the Security Council
– Britain, China, France, and Russia — toward Iran, North Korea, and
the Middle East. The directive urges American diplomats to discern the
“views of members states on the next SYG [Secretary General] race, to
include preferred candidates and candidates lacking U.N. member
support.” That phrase provided the first indication that the United
States is at least considering the possibility that Ban may not be
assured a second term when his first 5-year term expires at the end of
2011.

In most cases, the directive simply seeks to use American diplomats to
gauge international attitudes towards a broad spectrum of U.S. and
U.N. policies. For instance, how does the U.N. community view the role
of the U.S. military in resolving conflicts in Africa? What are the
prospects of China and Russia taking a tougher stance on human rights
in Burma or Zimbabwe? How is international sentiment toward the
International Criminal Court evolving?

But it also flags U.S. suspicions about the intentions of its foreign
counterparts, citing concern that countries like China, France, and
India may seek to “gain influence in Africa via U.N. peace
operations.” (China, for instance, now provides more U.N. peacekeepers
than any other major power). It also voices concern about efforts by
the European Union to secure additional voting rights in the U.N. and
its various agencies, a move that could potentially dilute American
influence.

Carne Ross,  a former British diplomat, said that it’s hardly news
that countries spy on one another at the U.N. “More harmful is the
reality that U.S. cables can be publicized in this devastating
manner,” he told Turtle Bay. “Diplomats may think twice before sharing
confidences with U.S. diplomats — at least until WikiLeaks is
forgotten.”

Perhaps the most surprising detail to emerge so far from the leaks is
the extent to which U.S. diplomats in New York and abroad have been
tasked with activities traditionally associated with intelligence
gathering; i.e., collecting personal or financial information from
their sources.

According to the directive, American diplomats are instructed to
collect detailed biographical information, including business cards,
cell-phone numbers, pagers, faxes, email listings, Internet or
Intranet handles, credit-card and frequent flyer account numbers, and
work schedules. It also calls on U.S. diplomats to collect “biographic
and biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats,” as well
as on diplomats from China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, South
Africa, Sudan, and Syria.

The new revelations were first divulged Sunday as part of a
coordinated disclosure by WikiLeaks of nearly a quarter of a million
sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables by several international news
organizations, including the New York Times, the Guardian, Der
Spiegel, and Le Monde. WikiLeaks released a selection of the actual
documents on its website Sunday afternoon EST.

The State Department cables are suspected of having been passed on to
WikiLeaks by a 22-year-old intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning,
according to the Guardian. Last spring, Manning was charged with
leaking sensitive materials to WikiLeaks, including a video of an
Apache helicopter killing two Reuters employees in 2007. He is facing
court martial.

In a statement, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied
American diplomats had been instructed to conduct espionage: “Our
diplomats are just that, diplomats. They represent our country around
the world and engage openly and transparently with representatives of
foreign governments and civil society. Through this process, they
collect information that shapes our policies and actions. This is what
diplomats, from our country and other countries, have done for
hundreds of years.”

A spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations did not respond
to a request for comment. Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the U.N.
secretary-general, said the U.N. was “not in a position to comment on
the authenticity of the document” but noted that the U.N. is “by its
very nature a transparent organization that makes a great deal of
information about its activities available to the public and member
states.” One U.N. official said that the organization had requested an
explanation from the U.S. government on the allegations, but has not
received an answer.

International treaties prohibit spying at the United Nations, but it
is widely practiced by many states. A British intelligence analyst
once revealed that U.S. and British spies listened in on the
conversations of then Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the eve of U.S.
led invasion of Iraq.

“The UN has previously asserted that bugging the secretary general is
illegal,” the Guardian reported, “citing the 1946 UN convention on
privileges and immunities which states: ‘The premises of the United
Nations shall be inviolable. The property and assets of the United
Nations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from
search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of
interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or
legislative action.’”

Other U.S. intelligence targets identified in the State Department directive:

*The U.S. solicits information on “plans and intentions” of U.N.
Security Council members, especially the permanent members, in
considering additional sanctions against North Korea. Also calls on
U.S. diplomats to determine North Korea’s position on “WMD-related
issues” at the United Nations.

*The U.S. seeks information on Ban’s “plans and intentions” regarding
Iran, and wants to known whether the secretary-general or any member
states intend to “pressure” the U.S. to take a particular course in
the Middle East peace process.

*Foreign NGOs with influence on a range of issues, including human
rights, globalization, justice and reproductive health. The U.S.
directive voices concern at the capacity of some NGOs to “undermine
U.S. policy initiatives” at the U.N. or to share “confidential”
information with U.N. staff.

*The U.S. seeks information on any possible U.N. plans to expand,
reinforce, or replace the U.N.-backed peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

*The U.S. directive also seeks the views of all key parties, including
Hamas, in influencing the debate on the Middle East at the United
Nations. For instance, it highlights the importance of deciphering the
“views, plans and tactics of Hamas to gain support in the UNSC [U.N.
Security Council] or UNGA [U.N. General Assembly] for its strategies
and positions.”

*The U.S. intelligence community is not only out for itself. The
directive seeks information about possible threats against U.N.
personnel and humanitarian aid workers in Iraq. It also seeks
information on possible financial irregularities in a variety of U.N.
agencies and international funds, including the World Health
Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and
Malaria.

*Solicits information on the views of the Security Council and other
U.N. members toward Cuban, Iranian, and Syrian bids for U.N.
leadership position, presumably in an effort to block them from
succeeding.

The only solution to the North Korean runaway politics is reunification with acceptance of North Korea elements in the united government. Former US President Carter calls for negotiations. So far none of the non-Koreans was ready to buy this idea – but thanks to the WikiLeaks we learn now that China might accept reunification as a way out from its seemingly unneeded headache.

What will be then the position of the other powers involved in the region?

———-

2010?12/01/
China open to unified Korea, leaked note says.
By Christian Oliver,Geoff Dyer in Seoul, in Beijing

Chinese officials have told international counterparts Beijing could ultimately accept a Korean peninsula unified under Seoul’s control, according to leaked US diplomatic dispatches.

Reports published on the WikiLeaks website on Tuesday counter the perception that China’s defence of the status quo on the Korean peninsula is absolute in spite of Beijing’s refusal to condemn Pyongyang for shelling a South Korean island last week and sinking one of Seoul’s warships in March.

In a diplomatic cable earlier this year, Chun Yung-woo, then South Korea’s vice-foreign minister, told the US ambassador to Seoul that Chinese officials had assured him North Korea “now had little value to China as a buffer.

UNITED NATIONS, November 22, 2010, by Matthew Russell Lee — When Seton Hall hosted UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday, it told the Press to expect a “major policy address entitled, ‘Can the UN Deliver What the World Needs?’”

At a time when for example the UN is accused of playing a role in the introduction and spread of cholera in Haiti, and has killed at least one Haitian demonstrator, one expected this issue to at least be mentioned in the major policy address. But Ban’s speech, as distributed under embargo to the UN press corps, did not even mention Haiti.

Amazingly, Ban’s speech praised his and the UN’s role in Myanmar and went on that “We did the same in Darfur. For years, conflict raged… today, the mission continues to protect civilians.” This right after the slaughter at Tawila, which even Ban acknowledged raised issues about the UN peacekeepers freedom of movement and protection of civilians.

Ban did not mention Sri Lanka, a country where he has been burned in effigy and where after tens of thousands of deaths, the International Crisis Group said the UN’s inaction should be investigated.

Not a mention of the mass rapes in Eastern Congo, and the UN peacekeepers’ inaction. After each of these incidents, the UN has said it can and will do better. But this is soon forgotten, not even mentioned amid the self congratulation.

This speech is described in house as Ban’s re-election speech: “all the great things I have done” (and none of the short falls, none of the need to or commitment to reform – spin, in short.)

An Inner City Press correspondent at the speech reports on questions about the South Sudan referendum, Afghanistan and terrorism, still nothing on cholera in Haiti, mass rape in the Congo.

At Monday’s noon press briefing, Ban’s acting deputy spokesman was asked if Ban would be receiving an honorary degree, as Seton Hall itself had been announcing since last week. Haq would not confirm it. But the speech, even as embargoed, began with thanks for the award. Great Communications system in place at the UN!

————————-

The above was followed with the exchange dated November 24, 2010 – www.innercitypress.com/ban2seton112410.html

———————

A Line in the Sea Divides the Two Koreas

Korea Herald A screenshot from the Web site of The Korea Herald shows the location of Yeonpyeong island, in disputed waters.

Updated | 5:21 p.m. The residents of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, who rushed to air-raid shelters on Tuesday as they came under attack from North Korea, are well aware that they live on the edge of a geopolitical fault line. The island is in disputed waters claimed by both countries, just two miles from the so-called Northern Limit Line, a maritime border the North has never recognized, and only eight miles from the North Korean coast.

Last year, my colleague Martin Fackler visited Yeonpyeong and reported:

Many of the island’s 1,600 civilian residents, mostly graying fishermen, said they felt caught in the middle. But they also say they are accustomed to the periodic escalations in tensions, which they describe as just another part of life on this disputed island.

Most said they were determined to go about their daily work of running their crab boats or tending fish traps along the island’s rocky coast.

As another colleague, Choe Sang-Hun, has explained, the Northern Limit Line — known to Koreans as the N.L.L. — is a reminder that the Korean War is formally on hold, not over.

When the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, rather than a permanent peace treaty, the warring militaries failed to agree upon a western sea border. The American-led United Nations forces unilaterally drew the Northern Limit Line, a border the South Korean and United States militaries have enforced since the end of the war.

But North Korea never accepted it, insisting on a border far south of the United Nations line that cuts deep into waters currently patrolled and fished by the South.

Two experts on the long-simmering border dispute, Mark Valencia and Jenny Miller Garmendia, explained on The Times Op-Ed page in 1999 that the N.L.L. is “equidistant between five islands occupied by South Korea and the North Korean coastline.” They added:

Since the line veers sharply to the north after leaving land, Pyongyang claims that it unfairly gives some of its waters to the South. The armistice agreement stipulates that the five islands are under South Korean control, but jurisdiction over the waters surrounding them is open to some interpretation.

North Korea further argues that its vessels have regularly fished in the waters claimed by the South, and that since the 1970s it has claimed under customary international law a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea in the area, which extends well south of the N.L.L. North Korean fishing boats and naval vessels have crossed the N.L.L. several dozen times a year since the late 1970s.

Reuters South Korean protesters expressed their support of the Northern Limit Line in 2007.

The disputed maritime border has led to several clashes between the armed forces of the two Koreas in recent years. In August, after North Korea seized a squidding boat and South Korea carried out aggressive naval exercises in the area, the North fired 100 artillery rounds into the sea near Yeonpyeong.

In March, an explosion sank the Cheonan, a South Korean Navy ship, in the same disputed waters. After the ship went down, killing 46 sailors, South Korea and a team on international investigators blamed a North Korean attack.

The two Korean navies also clashed over the N.L.L. in 1999, 2002 and 2009.

Before that, as Reuters reported on Tuesday, North Korea paid only fitful attention to the maritime border — not objecting at all until 1973 and then seeming to agree to recognize it in 1992.

As Mr. Valencia and Ms. Garmendia explained in their 1999 Op-Ed, the clash that year was precipitated by what seemed like unlikely cause for an international incident on a nuclear-armed peninsula: a “concentration of valuable crabs south of the N.L.L.”

Last year, Reuters reported from Yeonpyeong that local fishermen there “said they are losing out on the best crabs to hundreds of Chinese trawlers that pass through the North’s waters to fish in waters off limits to them. When tensions are low, the South’s fishermen try to push as close to the N.L.L. as possible.”

In a succinct analysis of Tuesday’s events on the BBC’s “World Update” program, Brian Myers, an American academic at Dongseo University in South Korea, argued that North Korea’s government needs to provoke military clashes of this kind: both to distract its population from its own economic failures and to bolster its claim to be defending national pride in the face of what it calls American imperialism on the peninsula. Mr. Myers said:

We need to keep in mind that North Korea is a self-described ‘military-first’ state — in other words, a state which justifies its existence not on the basis of any kind of economic promises or economic claims but on the basis of the claim to be the stronger of the two Koreas, the Korea that is standing up for itself. And when you have that kind of raison d’etre, then you need military victories on a periodic basis — or, at least, provocations of the outside world.

I think this kind of thing has been in the cards ever since the South Korean ship was sunk at the end of March, when the South Korean public basically broadcast its reluctance to retaliate militarily against North Korea….

The North Korean regime does not really have to worry so much about easing the way for the successor [to Kim Jong-il], the regime’s greater problem is, how does it justify the existence of this separate North Korea, when you have a thriving, an economically powerful South Korea next door. The only way in which it can do that, since it has failed so spectacularly on the economic front, is to bolster the public’s pride in the regime through shows of military strength and might.

Earlier this year, Mr. Myers wrote, in an essay for Foreign Policy, that his study of North Korean propaganda suggested that the regime’s ideology was not really Communist, but rather, a kind of “paranoid nationalism” that is essentially “racist,” in its affirmation of Korean superiority.

A discussion of the maritime frontier of the N.L.L. in a 2007 report by North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, gives a sense of the North Korean perspective on the border and its southern neighbors. The report praises an article in another state-run publication for, “disclosing the truth behind the ‘northern limit line’ and clarifying once again the principled stand of [North Korea] on it in connection with the fact that the warlike forces of [S]outh Korea are perpetrating the intrusion into the waters of the north side in the West Sea of Korea not just as a mere provocation but are pursuing the brigandish purpose of bringing under control those waters invaded by them.”

The North Korean report called the N.L.L. “an illegal ghost line… that the U.S. imperialist aggressor troops unilaterally drew… after occupying [S]outh Korea under the helmets of the ‘U.N. forces.’” It adds that “The U.S. imperialists, utterly exhausted after sustaining an unprecedented defeat in the Korean war, ordered Clark, the then commander of the ‘U.N. forces,’ to fix the so-called ‘northern limit line.’”

As for South Korea’s government, the North Korean agency suggested, “The [S]outh Korean authorities, steeped in flunkeyism and submission to the marrow of their bones, seek to attain their political and strategic aims to put an end to [moves toward] reunification and aggravate the north-south relations in a bid to please their American master at any cost.”

————–

China Faces a Nettlesome Neighbor in North Korea.
North Korea’s unending appetite for confrontation has complicated relations with China, its supposed patron.
www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/asia/24beijing.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a22

—

Interactive Feature: The North Korean Challenge.
North Korea, a dictatorship armed to the teeth but unable to feed its own people without foreign aid, has specialized in
provoking the international community for survival.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/05/world/asia/20090405-korea-timeline.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=ab1

U.N. Circus by by Joseph Klein on Nov 8th, 2010

from frontpagemag.com

Once the Obama administration decided last year to join the circus known as the United Nations Human Rights Council, it was only a matter of time before the U.S. faced judgment day on its own human rights record before this dysfunctional UN body.

Our turn came on November 5, 2010. “It is an honor to be in this chamber,” said Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Esther Brimmer to the council on the occasion of America’s examination. ”Star chamber” would be a more fitting description.

The “honor” that Brimmer was referring to was being present at the council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) hearing. The UPR is a rotating periodic examination of all UN member states’ human rights records by the Human Rights Council. The council includes such countries as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia. These serial human rights abusers exploit the UPR process to heap praise on each other and whitewash their own abysmal records, while scoring propaganda points against Western democracies with baseless accusations.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the Human Rights Council, captured perfectly the absurdity of America in the dock: “the U.N. system failed today by allowing non-democracies to hijack the session for political propaganda and to drum up anti-American sentiment worldwide.”

Predictably, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, China, Algeria, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Libya, and other dictatorships and terrorist-sponsoring states accused America of genocide, war crimes, and systematic anti-Muslim and anti-African racism.

For example, Cuban ambassador Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez called on the U.S. to end its blockade of the island country, calling it a “crime of genocide.” In addition, Cuba condemned the U.S. for “violations against migrants and mentally ill persons” and called on America to “ensure the right to food and health” for all citizens.

Iran’s delegation demanded the U.S. “halt serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law and even told the United States it needed to “combat violence against women.” Meanwhile, Iran is preparing to execute a woman on trumped up adultery charges.

Libya complained about U.S. “racism, racial discrimination and intolerance.”

North Korea, whose people are literally starving while the regime pursues its militaristic ambitions, told the U.S. “to address inequalities in housing, employment and education.”

The Obama administration should have seen this “bash America” circus coming. Just last year, a report highly critical of the United States — prepared by the United Nations’ former special rapporteur on “contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” Dr. Doudou Diène — was submitted to the very same UN Human Rights Council that is judging the United States’ human rights record today. Diène comes from Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country and a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

In his report, which Diène wrote following his three week “fact-finding” tour in this country that included meetings with various Islamic groups, Diène concluded that “racism and racial discrimination have profoundly and lastingly marked and structured American society.” He went on to say that the “historical, cultural and human depth of racism still permeates all dimensions of life of American society” and lashed out at what he characterized as “racial profiling” against “people of Arab, Muslim, South Asian or Middle-Eastern descent.”

The current special rapporteur who replaced Diène, Githu Muigai, is not as anti-American as Diène, but has still managed to take a gratuitous swipe at the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law which, he claimed, compromises basic international human rights that migrants are entitled to.

“This is the sort of statute that opens a floodgate, equips a policeman or such other law enforcement person on the beat with such immense powers as to compromise…the very fundamental human rights that ought to be enjoyed in such an enlightened part of the world as Arizona,” Muigai told reporters at a press conference at UN headquarters last week. He contined:

If I have found any specific group of people to be the subject of the most insidious contemporary forms of racial discrimination, those are migrants. And I think in many parts of the world today, immigrants bear the brunt of xenophobic intolerance and this is true of the United States and it is of Europe, and it is of many parts of the world.

It has been often said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result each time. Yet that is precisely what the Obama administration has done in submitting our country’s human rights record to the judgment of the UN Human Rights Council, knowing full well the biases that prevail there.

As former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton put it, “For the Obama administration, this is an exercise in self flagellation, which they seem to enjoy. But it doesn’t prompt equivalent candor from the real rights abusers.”

Is it a conflict of interests if the Korean UN Secretary General glows up to his eyes in Korean problems and glamor?

Our information comes from Matthew Russell Lee reporting and from widely available further sources that start asking more and more about the future of the World with a shivering nuclear Korean Peninsula. So, we cannot but contemplate again and again at how will the neighbors react to a Peninsula reunification that leaves in the Middle of the China, Russia, Japan triangle a nuclear  Korea based on the present South Korea technology married to the North Korean appetite for mischief. But can North Korea stand up much longer by itself alone on chicken legs? If China moves in what will the neighbors be compelled to do? That would be one way to put an end to globalization and the World economy woes.

China can not take this easy – will it intervene? Will this bring in the US? Can the US allow itself another adventure? Will the US and China agree to keep Mr. Ban Ki-moon on so he can speak the language of North Korea? Will they trust him to be neutral? Will China risk its overseas markets?

————

in above context – this last Friday looked like the UN Administration circling the wagons around the Secretary-General and we find this amusing. Please see for yourselves and use the link to get more.

At UN, Korean Themes of Seoul G-20 & Ban 2d Term, DPRK Human Rights Meeting: Links to Transcripts.

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 22, 2010. — The theme at the UN on Friday was Korea, Korea, both North and the South.

Alongside a festival of Korean food in the soon to close Delegates’ Dining Room — the shinsunro spicy seafood soup was particularly good — and a UN Day concert by a Korean symphony, South Korean UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addressed a closed meeting of member states about the upcoming G-20 meeting in Seoul.

Sources tell Inner City Press that statements of support for a second term for Ban are being solicited to be unveiled in Seoul at the G-20, as they were not at the General Debate last month in New York.

Across the hallway of the UN’s North Lawn Building in Conference Room 1, North Korea was the topic of a Third Committee of the GA, on human rights. Numerous western speakers urged North Korea, formally the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to allow a visit by the Special Rapporteur on human rights in that country, Marzuki Darusman.

If you got the flavor please get more of it at:
 www.innercitypress.com/un1korea10…

While the world was watching the Chilean mine, Fared Zakaria says – much else was going on in the world. and we’ll span the globe with a terrific GPS foreign policy panel.

The panel was made up as follows:

- Gideon Rose who was appointed Editor of Foreign Affairs in October 2010. He was Managing Editor of the magazine from 2000-2010.  He has also served as Associate Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council and Deputy Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and has taught American foreign policy at Princeton and Columbia.  He is the author of How Wars End (Simon & Schuster, 2010),

- Danielle Pletka – a specialist on Counterterrorism at the American Enterprise Institute were she is Vice President for Foreign and Defense matters,(Washington’s right wing AEI), She was born on Melbourne and has experience in the Middle Easr, South East Asia and the US Senate,

- and Crystia Freeland the Global Editor-at-Large at Reuters News until march 1st, 2010 she was the US based editor in Chief of The Financial Times. She is an Alberta Ukrainian-Canadian and had a brilliant record on the McLaughlin Group.

Among other people on the October 17, 2010 program, the likes of the would be rulers of North Korea of the Kim Jong-il’s family and the Sunni backed contender for the Iraqi leadership – Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia, there was also Peter Diamond, The newest American Economist to win the Nobel Prize – nearly unbelievable for Unemployment studies at a time that all agree the US must do something about Unemployment.

In this posting I do not intend to review the contributions of each one of these people. I rather want to say – that as different as they might be – I sensed that there was a clear unity in the way they evaluate the policy choices before Washington,

First let us look at Peter Diamond of MIT. He was nominated January 14, 2010 by President Obama to be on the Federal Reserve Board that is chaired by a former student of his – no other then Ben Bernanke – but Senator Shelby of the GOP from Alabama had the audacity to say that Peter Diamond will have to “Learn on the Job” – so he is not the man up to the job. Strange as it is – it reminded me of the Peace Prize having been awarded to Liu Xiaobo. The Chinese also said he was not up to the job either. ERGO – THERE IS A DEEP SIMILARITY BETWEEN SHELBY AND WEN – THEY ARE BOTH FAT – but that is where it ends. Premier Wen Jiabao has done a lot of good to his country while Senator Richard Shelby has mainly interfered with efforts to find solutions for the USA.

Is this an offensive depiction of Washington? I do not think so, neither do I believe that any of that panel would have said that it was.

First – everybody knows that the Republicans will win the House of Representatives on November 2nd 2010, and get close to equalize their position in the Senate – so next year they will have to take responsibility in the governing of the country. Frivolty will not fly anymore or they will dig themselves a very large hole come the 2012 elections.

Second – it does not seem that the Republicans have asked Professor Diamond for his opinions. He said to Fareed that, allowing for not everything to be always done to perfection, Obama was to be commended for having provided the needed stimulae to help the economy from avoiding a deep Depression – and Bernanke as “a student of the Depression,” understood you have to “step in” – so here a bravo from the teacher. Asked if  the real problem is that there is a structural problem that American workers do not have the skills for new Jobs? Diamond said that actually the catch is not that the labor market does not work, but that there is no demand. The government must provide money to the States and local Government to reduce the lay-offs. There must be credit flows and when the financial markets seize-up it gets worse he said. If the government did not act it would have been much worse. Diamond believes the Federal Economy is resilient and will adapt to new situations even in the situation of 10% unemployment. It will take at least another year to start moving.

Third – asked – “what would you do about the Bush Tax Cut?” he said that it is important to preserve some of it, but in the long run we should not make it permanent – we must look into the detail – some will get more taxes and some will get less.

In summary – Peter Diamond is no different from the Goldman-Sachs economists that supported the Clinton and Obama economics so far. That does not make him a favorite of mine, but it cearly made him very much the consensus candidate of the people on this TV program. That clearly should also cause a change of mind of Senator Shelby comes 2011 and a year after the job offer to him from President Obama, Nobel Prize winner Peter Diamond could be the third Scandinavia recognized American in the Obama Administration.

Listening to Allawi, we learned that it is almost full 9 months of gestation and pregnant Iraq has not given birth yet to a government. This is the longest time in history of elections that a country stayed without a government – said Fareed. With one major bloc backed by the Shi’a of Iran and the other main bloc hindered by Sunni extremism that re-established its links to Al-Qaida, we can predict a mess by the time the US proceeds with its pull-out. Services are lacking, the economy is stagnant, unemployment – this is the Iraq of today. From Somalia to Pakistan via Palestine  – it is the political environment that breeds extreme forces. Also the Saudis – it is said that they back Sunni hold-outs. This works in the favor of the Shi’i and the peace process is sabotaged. But then, the good politician he is, Allawi says that the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, President Mubarak want to see positive moves – it is only Iran that stands in the way.

All the above set the stage for the panel were Gideon Rose is responsible for having written “HOW TO END WARS.”

Fareed remarked that it is easier not to start new wars then to pull out from existing wars.

Chrystia said that “WARS END BECAUSE COUNTRIES RUN OUT OF MONEY” and Fareed mentioned that no-one remembers now why there was the war in Korea that dragged for one and a half years for no clear reason.

THE CONSENSUS WAS THAT IT WILL BE EASIER TO GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN THEN TO CUT ENTITLEMENTS.

So, back to it – it is all about availability of money – if there is no money you can have no war. The US issue in the November 2nd 2010 elections is unemployment and money – no one taks now of Iraq or Afghanistan. What if there will be a new war situation? and the North Korea developments might pose the US against China.

Let’s see. Fareed and the others agreed that the media has now 25 times more questions on China then Afghanistan – and let us not forget that future global relations will be about who owes what to whom.

WE WILL NOT TALK ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS ANYMORE WHEN ADDRESSING CHINA – THERE WILL BE MANY ISSUES WE WILL NOT MENTION ANYMORE.

There will be a change from China being now second power to becoming first power – America will be the second power by 2030.

Pletka supported Obama on Afghanistan. She still believes in power play but Fareed remarked to her that Obama probably did well about Iran – at least judged from the fact that the Israelis do not scream as much s before.” But her answer was that most of Irans neighbors are warried about Iran, and they tell you so the moment the door is closed behind you.

Rose remarked that when America pulls back that is when we find that America gets more desired around the world – as they see America is needed.

Fareed – in korea they told me that they are worried if America pulls out and Pletka hopes we will not be constrained by the economy.

Chrystia remarks that America sees that China is able to do great infrastructure projects. But earlier we saw that nuclear North Korea is going to implode. Next leadership is not built on charisma and is rather a construct with a halfwit at top entrusted to a regent who is the the brother in law, while the sister was just taken out of her home and closed in a general’s uniform.

If South Korea moves in and brings about the logical reunification – what happens to the nuclear weapons? Can China accept a strong united nuclear Korea at its border? Will this lead to a US – China confrontation? Is this part of a post Iraq/Afghanistan US adventurism?

How will the shared Republican/Democrat Congress react to an incident these coming two years?

China’s State Capitalism Poses Ethical Challenges.

By Ian Bremmer, Devin T. Stewart

GlobalPost, August 10, 2010

CREDIT: Bert van Dijk (CC).

Earlier this summer, a company owned in part by the Chinese government bought a 5.1 percent stake in the only American-owned provider of enriched uranium for use in civilian nuclear reactors.

The stake is small, but its implications are considerable. The American company, USEC, was involved with the original development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Chinese involvement could raise concerns about national security in Washington, and given China’s opaque form of economic management, the transaction raises other ethical issues around transparency and fairness.

In the long run, however, free market economies like the United States would best serve the cause of individual freedom worldwide by practicing what they preach. They should keep the global flow of money, ideas, and goods open.

As China’s economy grows, its political influence will expand, bringing Beijing into ever-closer contact with the interests of others. As the world’s largest exporter, for example, China will find itself in competition (and sometimes conflict) with a diverse set of multinational companies and governments. Within China, there will be more clashes involving the collision of local rules with foreigners and their business models.

Beijing continues to welcome foreign investment, but recent labor disputes at a Honda Motor factory and a spate of suicides involving workers at Foxconn, a Taiwanese-invested Chinese company that manufactures the Apple iPhone, underline the clash of political and commercial cultures. Sometimes these confrontations produce compromise or even a convergence of standards. At other times, open conflict is the likelier scenario.

China is the world’s leading practitioner of state capitalism, a system in which governments use state-owned companies and investment vehicles to dominate market activity. The primary difference between this form of capitalism and the Western, more market-driven variety, is that decisions on how assets should be valued and resources allocated are made by political officials (not market forces) with political goals in mind.

In China, robust growth is a good thing, as long as it doesn’t have second-order effects that undermine the leadership’s monopoly hold on political power. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and other governments practice various forms of this system, but China gives state capitalism its global significance.

The political agenda behind China’s state capitalist development is a complicated one. On the one hand, the financial crisis and global market meltdown have bolstered the arguments of those within the Chinese leadership who warn that reliance for economic growth on exports to Europe, America, and Japan exposes China to Western market volatility. In response, Beijing will gradually work to increase domestic demand for Chinese products and to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign consumers. On the other hand, the leadership knows that Chinese companies must adopt Western working standards and management techniques if labor unrest is to be contained.

The cases of Honda and Foxconn, which employs some 800,000 people in China, underline a remarkable trend: Chinese workers are demanding and receiving better working conditions and wages. For example, the Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress may give workers the officially sanctioned right to strike. This marks a positive development in the interaction of state capitalist and market-driven economics, but continued progress won’t come easy. The Chinese leadership will respect labor rights when necessary and ignore them when possible.

The financial crisis and BP’s oil spill remind us that excessive focus on near-term profits continue to plague market-driven capitalism. Yet, state capitalism poses profound ethical challenges of its own.

First, when state-owned companies go abroad in search of new contracts, they are not bound by shareholder opinion or reputational risk. As a result, they can do business in places and with people that their private-sector rivals cannot—and with a high degree of secrecy.

There are familiar examples like Iran, Sudan, and Myanmar. In Guinea last year, just 15 days after soldiers shot down 157 pro-democracy demonstrators, an unnamed Chinese company signed a $7 billion mining contract with the Guinean government. Multinational companies can no longer afford such transactions.

In addition, within free market democracies, courts exist to safeguard the rights of individuals and companies. In state capitalist countries, they exist to legitimize the state’s hold on political power. As a result, when the White House pressures BP to pay damages, the company knows it will have its day in court. In China, a foreign company is unlikely to win a ruling against the government.

In the United States, companies “lawyer up.” In China, they are “Googled out.”

Take Google, for example. When Google executives decided that cyber-attacks on its Gmail accounts from inside China could no longer be tolerated, they decided on open confrontation with China’s government over censorship issues. Google remains a relatively popular brand with Chinese internet users, but there were several reasons why Beijing would rather force Google out than compromise with it.

First, there are other search engine firms that do not challenge the leadership’s right to restrict the flow of information. Second, one of those firms is Baidu, a Chinese company with friends in government and a much larger Chinese market share than Google. The message sent to Google was clear: Lawyer up if you want to, but you have started a war you cannot win.

The clash of market-driven and state-driven capitalism poses other questions. Should U.S. lawmakers allow a company or investment fund owned by a foreign government to own significant stakes in a U.S. financial firm or oil company?

On the one hand, the political firestorm that erupted in Washington when China National Offshore Oil Corporation tried to buy U.S.-owned Unocal in 2005 generated plenty of friction in U.S.-Chinese relations and did lasting damage to America’s reputation as a destination for foreign investment.

Yet, there are good reasons to scrutinize these kinds of proposals. State-owned companies and sovereign wealth funds based in authoritarian countries are often as opaque as their governments. Is it not reasonable to wonder how such a company or fund will manage its new assets before approving a sale with potential security implications?

On the other hand, if relatively free market countries are to compete successfully with state capitalist systems, it won’t be by trying to beat them at their own protectionist game.

The unprecedented cross-border flows of ideas, information, people, money, goods, and services have already done a lot of good for a lot of people. If allowed to develop further, they will eventually open state capitalist systems to a degree of free market competition that will force them to change.

Not all trades are good ones. Some foreign investment might legitimately compromise U.S. national security. But if the goal is to shift power and wealth from authoritarian governments into the hands of private citizens, the game must be played on free market terms.

—————————-

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and author of The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? Devin Stewart is program director and senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where Bremmer is a trustee.

UNITED NATIONS, ICP, August 11, 2010  — Starting with a 200 page book of “Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew,” the get-things-done founder of modern Singapore, American author Tom Plate is engaged in a Giants of Asia trilogy. The next in the series is Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia.

The third Giant of Asia, Plate said at a VIP book party on August 10, will be UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Plate told an audience including the Permanent Representatives to the UN of Vietnam, Costa Rica, The Netherlands and of course Singapore, which hosted the event, that in his experience Asian leaders are more concerned about community rights than individual or human rights.

He asked rhetorically, do you want to solve the problem of drug gangs in Los Angeles? Give Lee Kuan Yew $10 billion, and look away for 18 months. Come back and it will be solved.

Some in the audience wondered what might happen during those 18 months, from the leader who instituted caning for the mis disposal or even chewing of gum. A professor in the audience asked about the balance between development and human rights.

Plate responded that while to the “Western” mind, publicly punishing the wrong person in order to send a message to others might violate due process, to Lee Kuan Yew and presumably the other Giants of Asia, the calculus is not so simple.

If the mis-punishment helps the community at large, it might on balance be a good thing, Plate said.

Inner City Press, invited without conditions to the event but then asked to not mention at least one of the attendees, asked Plate if he would consider interviewing some of the some openly authoritarian strong men of Asia, including Than Shwe of Myanmar and Kim Jong-Il of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Plate replied that if asked to go to Pyongyang and given access to Kim Jong-Il, he would be on the next plane. He said that he doubted Than Shwe, at 76, could endure the type of multi-day interview process which he engaged in with Lee Kuan Yew.

One wonders, then, how a sitting Secretary General, embroiled in a management scandal triggered most recently by the damning End of Assignment Report of outgoing lead UN investigator Inga Britt Ahlenius, will have time to sit for this Giants of Asia profile.

Without attributing the concerns, there seem to have been a belated request not to publicize the identity of Plate’s third Giant of Asia until after Mr. Ban’s second term is more secure.

But, one cynical in the audience asked, is the problem the publicity or the vanity book project itself?

UN’s Ban Depicted in Sri Lanka: Giant of Asia?

Inner City Press first heard of Plate’s book when a section about Sri Lanka was circulated, largely by the Tamil diaspora. Lee Kwan Yew is quoted on page 55 saying the -

“example is Sri Lanka. It is not a happy, united country. Yes, they [the majority Sinhalese government] have beaten the Tamil Tigers this time, but the Sinhalese who are less capable are putting down a minority of Jaffna Tamils who are more capable. They were squeezing them out. That’s why the Tamils rebelled. But I do not see them ethnic cleansing all two million plus Jaffna Tamils. The Jaffna Tamils have been in Sri Lanka as long as the Sinhalese…[referring to Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa] ‘I’ve read his speeches and I knew he was a Sinhalese extremist. I cannot change his mind.’”

Plate was asked about this section of the book, and said that it was difficult to keep it in. Afterward, Inner City Press asked Plate to explain: how had wanted the section to come out? Of all that he said Tuesday night, this was the only time that Plate asked to go off the record. We will respect that, just as we’ll respect the request to omit the presence of at least one individual and entourage.

Singapore’s Mission to the UN, its Permanent Representative Vanu Gopala Menon, his Deputy, wife and staff are to be commended for hosting such an eclectic crowd, and serving afterward such good food, including the Indian paratha break renamed roti — and tinged with coconut — when it arrived in Lee Kuan Yew’s giant laboratory in one of the smallest nation states.

There was Tamil advocates among the attendees, including the son of the plaintiff in a recent free speech case in the U.S. Supreme Court. Some wondered at the irony of Ban Ki-moon, who long delayed naming, and still has not begun, a panel about accountability for civilian deaths in Sri Lanka in 2009, choosing as his conversational biographer the writer who coaxed the above quoted analysis of ethnic cleansing and Sinhalese extremism in Sri Lanka, to the level of the president.

We will have more on this and on the rest of Plate’s illuminating talk, including his and Lee Kuan Yew’s views of the UN and the ways in which its Secretary General are elected and, at times, re-elected. The interplay of Ban’s drive for re-election and his participation at Plate’s third “Giant of Asia” will also be explored.

* * *

At UN, Ban’s Travails Trigger Candidacy Tales, De Mistura, Zeid, Kubis, Kerim or even Bachelet or Bill Clinton, Game On

UNITED NATIONS, August 9 — Alternate candidates to Ban Ki-moon are emerging before the next UN Secretary General term begins on January 1, 2012. Tellingly, even people given UN posts by Ban Ki-moon are among reported candidates.

Ban named Staffan de Mistura as his representative in Afghanistan, after de Mistura hired Ban’s son in law Siddarth Chatterjee as his chief of staff with the UN in Iraq. (Ban’s son in law has since been hired by Jan Mattsson as a high official of the UN Office of Project Services in Copenhagen).

But, people recruited to work for the UN in Afghanistan tell Inner City Press, de Mistura harbors the dream of swooping in as a dark horse candidate to replace Ban in late 2011.

There is “blood in the water,” these sources say, particularly following the damning End of Assignment report of Inga Britt Ahlenius. Ban’s “melt down” then retraction on August 9 about job promises made in the course of replacing Ahlenius won’t help either.

The problem for de Mistura and other non-Asian contenders is that the S-G position is said to belong to a regional group for at least 10 years.

When the U.S. vetoed Egypt’s Boutros Boutros Ghali in 2005, the post next went to another African. So it would be with Ban, the assumption goes, with China demanding equal treatment for Asia.

But, as Inner City Press reported some time ago, even Team Ban has a theory that the U.S. might trade its de facto ownership of the top World Bank post to China in exchange for the right to replace Ban with a S-G of its choice.

De Mistura, having served as U.S. ground cover and fig leaf in Iraq and then Afghanistan, feels he would have U.S. support. A long shot candidate mentioned is Bill Clinton. Others point to Jose Ramos Horta of Timor Leste, in the Asian group like another candidate, Zeid Bin Ra’ad of Jordan.

UN’s Ban and de Mistura: one bleary eyed with lack of sleep, the other looking long

Lula of Brazil would appear to have lost U.S. support, given his country’s vote against the recent sanctions on Iran. Shashi Tharoor appears to have shot himself in the foot with Cricket-gate.

More savvy, some say, is Michelle Bachelet. She is understood to have not leaped at the offer of the top UN Women post. Does this mean that, like with the UNICEF post given to Tony Lake, she is shooting higher?
From those heights, at UNDP, Helen Clark is often mentioned.

There are other plotters. Some point to the alliance between Ms. Ahlenius and Alicia Barcena, who left the top UN Management post when Ban came in and went to ECLAC in Santiago, Chile. She was in New York and dined with Ahlenius shortly before Ahlenius leaked her memo. Also involved, sources say, was Barcena’s Management predecessor Christopher Burnham.

Next in line, they argue, are the Eastern European states. From 2006, there is Vaira Vike-Freiberga. Jan Kubis is mentioned (Ban gave him a temporary post during the violence in Kyrgyzstan), along with former General Assembly president Srgjan Kerim, to whom Ban gave a Special Envoy on Climate Change UN post. Do you see a pattern here?

“There are candidates galore, and there is blood in the water,” as one source puts it. Let the games begin.

This all comes, as Inner City Press first reported, against the backdrop of ad hoc meetings to “revitalize the General Assembly” which are discussing requiring Ban Ki-moon to come before the GA to seek his second term, and not only the Security Council.

Specifically, under the heading “Selection of the Secretary General,” the draft “takes note of the views expressed at the Ad Hoc Working Group at the 64th session and bearing in mind the provisions of Article 97 of the Charter, emphasizes the need for the process of selection of the Secretary General to be inclusive of all Member States and to be made more transparent.. including through presentation of candidates for the position of the Secretary General in an informal plenary of the General Assembly.”

Interestingly, the marked up draft of this pending paragraph reads as follows:

“10. Affirms its commitment to continuing its consideration of the revitalization of the General Assembly’s role in the selection and appointment of the Secretary General, including through (encouraging (Algeria / NAM: delete and add ‘the’) Russian Federation: retain) presentation of candidates for the position of Secretary General in an informal plenary of the General Assembly before the Security Council considers the matter (Russian Federation); Russian Federation: bracket entire para.”

10 Alt. Also encourages formal presentation of candidatures for the position of the Secretary General in a manner than allows sufficient time for interaction with member states, and requests candidates to present their views to all Member States of the General Assembly (Belgium / EU, US & Russia) (Algeria / NAM supports Islamic Republic of Iran proposal of retaining as OP 10 bis).”

In the Security Council, placating or giving patronage to the five Permanent Members would be enough to gain the second term. But if the GA and regional grouping get involved, Ban’s snubs like that of Africa for the deputy post in the UN Development Program, and the devaluation of the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, could come back to haunt Ban, along with his more recent appointment of Alvaro Uribe to his Gaza flotilla panel, over the objections of Venezuela which wil head the Group of 77 and China.

* * *

At UN, As Ban Denies Deals with Israel and for OIOS Posts, Doubts Raised About Both, What was US Told?

UNITED NATIONS, August 10 — Just as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated on August 9 that he made no “agreement behind the scenes” that Israeli Defense Forces will not be interviewed by his Panel of Inquiry, he now maintains that no commitment of posts in the Office of Internal Oversight Services was made to gain support for his replacement candidate to head OIOS, Carman Lapoint-Young.

But questions arose on August 10 about discrepancies between the transcript of Ban’s August 9 remarks and the UN’s subsequent denial. Ban said

“he was one of the finalists, the South African whom you are talking about. If he [had been] willing to take the job, then I was okay [for him] to fill that post. There are certain cases when someone was applying for a certain post, and where she or he was not successful for that post, and because of the excellent quality of the candidate – we really wanted to keep certain candidates in our system – we offered a lower rank.”

But shortly after he said this — even the transcript is inaccurate — Ban’s Office said

“The Secretary-General wants to make it absolutely clear that the recruitment process for the Director of the Investigations Division will start only after the new Under-Secretary-General of the Office of Internal Oversight Services has taken up her post. This selection will be conducted strictly in accordance with the established rules and procedures. The assertion that a South African was offered the job is completely unfounded.”

Inner City Press on August 10 asked Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky had Ban had meant by “we offered a lower rank.” Nesirky resplied that Ban “was confused by what the question was,” and claimed that the comment was a “general statement of principle not related to OIOS.” Video here, from Minute 31:26.

It is not a general statement of principle to say ““he was one of the finalists, the South African.. we offered a lower rank.” It is a statement about a particular individual being made an offer.

Likewise, Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu insisted on August 10 that despite Ban’s August 9 denials, Ban has made a “discrete” agreement that the panel would not interview IDF personnel. Ban had said he made no “agreement behind the scenes.”

At the end of his August 9 press conference, Ban urged journalists to focus on the “big issues” and not personnel (or “personal”) disputes. But if an answer about offering OIOS post(s) in order to gain support for a candidate for OIOS does not have credibility, how does an answer about a “discrete” agreement about the mandate of the UN Gaza flotilla panel?

UN’s Ban and Barak, discrete agreement not shown

A Security Council diplomat on August 10 approached Inner City Press with another connection between the August 9 OIOS questions and Ban’s panels on Gaza and Sri Lanka. If Ban was so rattled and pushed by a single journalist — even the “overgrown schoolboy” –imagine, the diplomat mused, what happens between Ban and Israel, or Sri Lanka.

As for the outgrown schoolboy, he points out: wasn’t it a schoolboy who said “the Emperor has no clothes”?  Indeed…

Footnote: further to US Ambassador Susan Rice’s statement that the UN’s Gaza flotilla panel is “not a substitute” for national proceedings, Inner City Press is that during the Security Council consultations on the press statement by which Council welcomed Ban’s panel, the U.S. opposed linking the panel to the Council’s own May 31 – April 1 President Statement calling for an investigation.

So what did Ban tell Susan Rice and the US about the panel and its scope? Or about post promises made to get Ms. Lapoint confirmed as head of OIOS?

* * *

At UN, Ban “Melts Down, Admits” Dealing An OIOS Post to a South African, Calls Ethics Questions Small, 2d Term in Play

UNITED NATIONS, August 9, updated – “I always do the right thing,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday, faced with long pending questions about mis-management and undermining the independence of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services.

But Ban appeared to admit violating a founding principle of OIOS, that the Secretary General not intrude and give out top OIOS jobs on a political basis.

He was asked repeatedly to confirm or deny that he promised the second level OIOS post to a South African, to gain support for his appointment of a Canadian, Ms. Lapointe Young, to replace outgoing Inga Britt Ahlenius. (Inner City Press was the first to report this deal, here.)

At first Ban suggested these questions be dealt with in a separate session. Then he portrayed them as “small” questions. Many reporters were unclear if they were being directed to not get into “personal” or “personnel” questions.

The latter seems difficult, since Ban ultimately said he had personally taken the personnel decision to give the second OIOS post, even before the ostensibly independent new director comes in, to a South African candidate.

Many correspondents were frustrated at how the press conference was run, with no questions taken on Sudan — which is threatening to throw the UN out, while starving the residents of the Kalma Camp — or the Rwanda election or the Ban administrations flip-flip on Kashmir.

But even those most focused on UN management and Ms. Ahlenius’ damning End of Assignment Report were dissatisfied by Ban’s answer that any questioning of his administration’s ethics is unfair. There are a range of questions, including about Ban’s most senior advisers. These, they say, will be coming out as a second term for Ban is considered.

UN’s Ban pre melt down, post deals not shown

Ban was asked about his Gaza flotilla panel — he said no side agreement was made with Israel not to interview its soldiers — but not about his stalled and even most constrained panel on Sri Lanka war crimes.

He was asked about appointing Alvaro Uribe to the Gaza panel, despite Venezuela’s recent complaints. Ban said he has known Uribe as Secretary General for a long time, and that Uribe has his “full confidence.” What will Venezuela, the next head of the Group of 77 and China, say?

As one snarky correspondent said after what he called Ban’s “melt down,” this politically is the time when alternate candidates to become Secretary General in 2012 will begin to appear, even before the upcoming General Debate in mid September. Watch this site.

Footnote: even on the ostensible topic of Ban’s first press conference since the Ahlenius memo, the High Level Panel on Global Sustainability, lack of candor became apparent. When, after his loss of power in Australia, Kevin Rudd flew to New York and met with Ban, Inner City Press attended the photo op, and noted that Ban’s climate advisor Janos Pasztor was in attendance, and that the meeting lasted a full 50 minutes.

Inner City Press asked Ban’s spokesperson if the meeting involved the offering of a UN position of any kind. It was just a courtesy call, Inner City Press was repeatedly told — even after Rudd, back in Australia, bragged through his spokesman about the offer of a post.

At the end of Ban’s press conference, Inner City Press asked Pasztor if in the meeting with Rudd, the supposed courtesy call, this post was discussed. Yes, Pasztor said. Some courtesy call. The same snarky reporter laughed at the inclusion of US Ambassador Susan Rice on the panel, calling it a craven attempt to nail down US support for a second term as Secretary General. We’ll see.

Update of 12:41 pm: after publication of the above, UN Spokesperson – Do Not Reply sent this:

Subject: UN Spokesperson’s clarification regarding the Office of Internal Oversight Services
Date: Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 12:34 PM

The Secretary-General wants to make it absolutely clear that the recruitment process for the Director of the Investigations Division will start only after the new Under-Secretary-General of the Office of Internal Oversight Services has taken up her post. This selection will be conducted strictly in accordance with the established rules and procedures. The assertion that a South African was offered the job is completely unfounded.

“If you say so.” Compare to video, here. And, there are two D-2 posts in OIOS…

from The Korea Society <The_Korea_Society@mail.vresp.com>

Like everyone else we try to understand the sense in the sinking of the South Korean (the Republic of Korea ROK) ship and we were glad to have the chance to listen to the official ROK version, this after we were familiar with a Japan Times article that mentioned two South Korean professors living in the US that expressed serious doubt about this version. We are trained to discredit the North Korea version because we have indeed little belief in anything this only remainig Stalinist regime puts forward. So this is not our problem. Our problem is rather that we sense here a difference of points of view betwen ROK and the US and this could sign in new times of danger in the Far East.

What does this have to do with Sustainable Development? It does. We wrote several times in the past of the terrific internal market a re-united Korea would have, so its future could be as bright as that of the re-united Germany. The placing of a Germany of the East in the middle of the China – Japan – India triangle could help push forward the whole region and help with the new economy of the 21st century.

South Korea wants to be granted an image of stability and stable management of the Peninsula. After analyzing the Security Council resolution on the Cheonan incident, it looks like one-sided and strengthening the US-ROK relations with a strong feeling of recomitment in the US. Was this the objective of an exercise?

On the North Korean side they clearly would like to stabilize the economy. They do not come out with large provocative acts but continue since Cheonan with a string of small provocations and it is remembered that they have some 30-40 kilo of Plutonium.

Politically the language is strange.

The ROK speaks of PEACE, ECONOMY, HAPPY COMMUNITY on the peninsula, while the North wants to talk via the 6-Party dialogue intermediary route.

Now to the ROK Cheonan: “It was an underwater explosion of a CHT -02D torpedo that created a shock wave and bubble effect that broke the ship in half.” This is backed by an international group of experts that was organized by South Korea. But then, as we will see from the article in the Japan Times, there seem to be signs that the old ship had structural problems, the Aluminum was being attacked – some white powder was found and perhaps it was just a plain accident that was indeed not caused by the North Koreans. But that does not mean anyway that they are angels.

The Vice Minister points out that the US has returned to Korea 47 out of the 80 bases it had and the USFK relocation project concentrates the forces to two hubs.

With all of this Moody’s ratings went up and there is hope a US-Korea Free Trade Agreement will be ratified.

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search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20100710b2.html

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Scholars doubt Cheonan finding
Staff report, The Japan Times

Two visiting U.S.-based experts called Friday in Tokyo for a
reinvestigation into the sinking of a South Korean warship allegedly
by a North Korean submarine, arguing a multinational probe and report
on the incident had many inconsistencies and flaws.

The report, released in May, was based on a probe by the Joint
Civilian-Military Investigation Group (JIG) to look into the March
sinking of the Cheonan and the loss of 46 South Korean sailors.

Jae Jung Suh, an associate professor of international politics at
Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C., and Seung Hun Lee, a
professor of physics at the University of Virginia, claimed the
condition of the salvaged Cheonan is inconsistent with the JIG
conclusion that the sinking was due to a shock wave and a bubble
effect and that the blue ink marking on the torpedo reading “No. 1″ in
Hangul would have been burned off in a detonation.

They also said the “white compounds” found on both the recovered ship
and torpedo were not substances resulting from an explosion but are
most likely “rusted” aluminum exposed to moisture or water for a long
time.”

“We do not know (what happened to the Cheonan), and nobody knows at
the moment,” Suh said Friday at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of
Japan in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward.

————————————

THE UPDATE IS THAT WEDNESDAY JULY 22, 2010, US Secretary of State Ms. Hillary Clinton and US Secretary of Defense Mr. Robert Gates, will be in Seoul to discuss security issues and the continuing tension with North Korea.

At UN, N. Korea Ambassador Declares Victory, Came Late to Dark Press Area.
By Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press.
UNITED NATIONS, July 9 — North Korea’s Ambassador Sin Son Ho came late to the UN press area, 20 minutes after Susan Rice of the U.S. and her Japanese and South Korean counterparts had spoken and left.
He sat with Inner City Press, asking where the other reporters were. They had left, but following tweets from InnerCityPress and others, some returned. But there was no UNTV crew, and therefore no sound.

Sin Son Ho sat in the penned in press area, sweating. Inner City Press offered him a fan, one handed out in June at a largely Japanese march from Times Square to the UN. “NO! Nuclear Weapons” were the words on fan. Sin Son Ho declined.
Inner City Press asked him if he has seen the photo exhibit in the UN’s entrance about the De-Militarized Zone. He nodded. “My country very beautiful,” he said. “Very beautiful.”

Why did he come so late to the stakeout, after Ambassadors Rice, Takasu and Park had already spoken. He didn’t want to mixed with them, was the answer.

Other reporters began to arrive. Some wondered how the UN Secretariat could be treating North Korea and its Ambassador this way. The emphasis, however, was on getting him to speak and take questions before he left. Inner City Press plugged the lights in. The microphone stand was tilted.

Finally the UNTV crew arrived, and Sin Son Ho began. He denounced the Security Council, which he said “failed to bring the correct judgment or conclusion to this case.” He said the Peninsula was now at a “trigger point” and could “explode at any moment.”

The first question was in Korean, but Sin Son Ho answered in English. This was, he said, a great diplomatic victory. Inner City Press began asking about his statement, in an earlier press conference, that he would lose his job if the Council took action.
A reporter shouted, “Will North Korea take military action?” Sin Son Ho replied, “Thank you for coming,” and walked away from the microphone.

A swarm of TV camera people, mostly from Japanese media, ran after him and up the stairs. A long time UN Security officer tried to stop the camera people, who surrounded Sin Son Ho as he passed through the turnstile. And then he was gone.

* * *

At UN, Korean Ship Attack But Not Attacker Condemned, Faster Action on Lebanese Rock Throwing.

By Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press.

UNITED NATIONS, July 8 — At the UN Security Council, it’s hurry up and wait. The sinking of the Cheonan ship was suddenly put on the agenda for consultations Thursday afternoon at 4:30. Some media reported that a statement condemning the sinking, and presumably North Korea, would be issued that same afternoon.

But Council sources told the Press that the meeting was only for the purpose of finally distributing the draft Presidential Statement to the other members of the Council, beyond the P-5 Plus Two. At least for appearance’s sake, the pretense of non P-5 agreement must be kept up. Therefore no statement will issue until Friday.

And when it does, it will not squarely blame North Korea-see below “the Security Council condemns the attack which led to the sinking”

Also slated for Friday is a “quick and dirty” press statement in support of France’s peacekeepers, heroically fighting rock throwers in South Lebanon. France has drafted what it wants, and thinks it will get agreement.

Even though UN staff were barricaded into their offices in Sri Lanka by a mob led by a government minister, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was burned in effigy, belatedly blamed it on the government, the Security Council has not, and in all probability will not, take up the issue. Until a ship gets sunk. And yet then…. Watch this site.

from: www.ft.com/cms/s/0/08d6fc3a-8600-…

we learned the following – “Argentina in Cup dilemma.”