NORTH KOREA: "Dear Leader" KIM JONG-IL Blusters in Saddam's Wake

The Singapore Straits Times (in English) ^ | 18 December 2003 | Richard Halloran

[AmericanInTokyo]

'Dear Leader' [KIM JONG IL] Blusters in Saddam's wake

By RICHARD HALLORAN

FOR THE STRAITS TIMES

INTELLIGENCE agencies from Seoul to Singapore would pay dearly for the answer to perhaps the most intriguing question in Asia arising from the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq:

What does the 'Dear Leader' of North Korea, Mr Kim Jong Il, like Saddam a charter member of United States President George W. Bush's 'axis of evil', think of this turn of events?

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), through which the hermit kingdom communicates with the rest of the world, was defiant several days after Saddam's arrest last weekend, linking Iraq with North Korea as the US has 'designated the Middle East and North-east Asia as major targets in realising its ambition for world domination'.

Without mentioning Saddam by name, KCNA asserted: 'The US claims that it has laid a springboard from which to put the Middle East under its control after occupying Iraq, a sovereign state. It is now concentrating its efforts on carrying out its North-east Asia military strategy.'

It seems fair to speculate that Mr Kim, who lives in luxury as did Saddam, may have been taken aback when he saw the pictures of a shaken Saddam being dragged from a filthy rat hole not far from one of his former palaces.

That reaction may have been intensified by pictures of Saddam being treated like a common criminal - giving him a medical inspection, looking for lice in his hair, making him shave his scruffy beard, and taking the identification picture that an American TV commentator called 'the mother of all mug shots'.

The 'Dear Leader' has probably gone to some lengths to prevent the North Korean people from seeing those pictures of Saddam's ignominious surrender and the message to be drawn from them. Saddam and his ilk are quite willing for others to die for their cause but when it came to his own end, he quit without a struggle. He was no honourable warrior.

It remains to be seen whether all this will make the North Koreans more amenable in negotiating with the US, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia in the six-party talks intended to dissuade the 'Dear Leader' from his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, or make him more adamant.

North Korea - whose formal name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) - has been negotiating with the US through KCNA. In its latest pronouncement, KCNA said: 'As the US urges the DPRK to dismantle its nuclear weapons completely, verifiably and irreversibly, the latter has the same right to demand that the US, the dialogue partner, give it complete, verifiable and irreversible security assurances.'

North Korea has been demanding that the US agree to a non-aggression treaty in which America would pledge not to attack it. The Bush administration has refused because it has next to no chance of getting a treaty through the US Senate.

Mr Bush, however, has said repeatedly that the US will not invade North Korea. Press reports said the US has offered to sign a non-aggression pledge along with the others in the six-party talks.

Mr Bush was non-committal in his press conference this week, other than to emphasise the diplomatic approach: 'In North Korea, we're now in the process of using diplomatic means and persuasion to convince Kim Jong Il to get rid of his nuclear weapons programme.'

Referring to Mr Kim, the President said: 'I hope, of course, he listens.'

KCNA said if the US would accept what North Korea has called 'the principle of simultaneous actions', then 'the DPRK is ready to respond to it with the elimination of all its nuclear weapons'. The North Koreans warned, however, that delay 'would only result in compelling the DPRK to steadily increase its nuclear deterrent force'.

That there may have been ties between Saddam and Mr Kim was rumoured in the days before the US invasion of Iraq. A wealthy entrepreneur in Hong Kong, Mr Stanley Ho Hung-sun, was quoted in the South China Morning Post as saying Mr Kim had offered Saddam asylum in North Korea.

Mr Ho, who is known to have had business connections with Pyongyang, said then: 'North Korea is willing to give Saddam and his family a mountain in the country.'

Mr Kim may be regretting the offer, if indeed it was genuine. As Pravda, the Russian newspaper, asserted about the same time: 'One thing is perfectly clear now: The North Korean leader would not like to share Saddam's fate.'

Richard Halloran is a freelance writer based in Hawaii.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Although I have a sarcastic tagline, as I wish even more could be done, we are LIGHT YEARS ahead of what the Clinton strategy was, or what the Dean or Clark or Hitlery strategy would be about North Korea and "Mr" Kim Jong il.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[DoctorMichael]

Bttt

[F14 Pilot]

Thanks for the Bump~!

[expatpat]

It's interesting that GW's active foreign policy causes such different reactions in conservative vs liberal circles. Conservatives, and centrists, love it; the libs hate it. What are they afraid of (apart from losing in '04)?

[Map Kernow]

Mr Ho, who is known to have had business connections with Pyongyang, said then: 'North Korea is willing to give Saddam and his family a mountain in the country.'

And "all he can eat" dead-of-starvation Korean children.