Retreat at U.N. After Chinese Drop a Hint

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The New York Sun

UNITED NATIONS — After China strongly hinted it was ready to veto a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution that would cement North Korea’s past agreements into binding international law, Japan and other sponsors backed off and declined to push the proposal to a vote yesterday.

Instead, China circulated a draft for a nonbinding statement that was immediately rejected by Japan, Britain, and America as not adequate to address the threat posed by the recent North Korean missile testing.

Officially, Japanese, American, and British diplomats said they did not push for a vote yesterday to allow Chinese diplomats currently in Pyongyang to coax Kim Jong Il’s regime into recommitting to past agreements it had made, including a moratorium on launching missiles from the Korean peninsula.

North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear program and commit to such a moratorium on tests as recently as September 2005, but on July Fourth it launched seven mid- and long-range missiles into the Sea of Japan in violation of the agreement.

The resolution sponsors said the council needs to respond to those violations,which they consider a “threat to international peace and security.” Posing such a threat makes a country subject to Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, which allows enforceable measures, including the imposition of economic sanctions and even military means.

Several diplomats who requested anonymity told The New York Sun that although China stopped just short of threatening a veto, it led the sponsors to understand it would block any Chapter 7 resolution. China has rarely used its right, as a permanent Security Council member, to veto resolutions.

The sponsors circulated their proposal on Friday in a ready-to-vote format, known diplomatically as “in blue.” But yesterday, the British ambassador to the United Nations, Emyr Jones Parry, told reporters, “We are now confronted with the position that the resolution currently in blue cannot be adopted.”

Mr. Jones Parry later qualified his statement,saying,”In today’s situation” the resolution is not passable, “but that’s not saying it wouldn’t be passable.” The American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said that if and when the Chinese diplomatic efforts currently under way in Pyongyang fail, “I already asked the Chinese for their support for the resolution.”

The Chinese vice premier, Hui Liangyu, began a six-day visit to Pyongyang yesterday, which allowed the resolution’s sponsors to call for a timeout to await the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. “The Chinese mission to North Korea has some promise, and we would like to let that play out,” Secretary of State Rice told reporters.A State Department nuclear negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, returned to Beijing yesterday, attempting to coordinate the diplomatic efforts.

But Japanese officials seemed to be in no mood for appeasement. “We do not have an option of doing nothing until we suffer damage,” the foreign minister, Taro Aso, was quoted as saying in Tokyo. A government official, Shinzo Abe, indicated that Japan might reverse its self-imposed non-military stance, launching a pre-emptive strike against Pyongyang. “There is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense,” he said.

In New York, Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kenzo Oshima, was clearly frustrated with China’s opposition to a strong, enforceable resolution.

Japan sees the launch of six missiles that could reach his country, as well as one that could travel as far as Russia or Alaska, as an international threat, Mr.Oshima said. “If the North Korean missiles were directed in a different direction, I wonder what would be the position of [Beijing’s] government,” he added.

China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, told reporters that his country would “not support” the Japanese proposal, language that indicated that China would either kill the resolution by vetoing it, or would allow it to pass by abstaining in the vote.

But in weekend meetings of the five permanent council members and Japan, Mr. Oshima and his American, British, and French colleagues failed to convince China even to negotiate on the Japanese proposal, according to two diplomats who said they were not authorized to comment for the record about the closed-door consultations.

The Chinese, one council diplomat told the Sun, avoided any direct threat of a veto. “They haven’t said as much, but the assumption was there,” he said. The implied threat was enough for the resolution’s sponsors to reconsider their decision to present the proposal for a vote yesterday.

Instead of a Chapter 7-based resolution, China then proposed a statement that stopped short of any future means of forcing Pyongyang to stick to agreements and which determined that the missile tests “caused negative implications to the regional peace and stability.”

Mr. Bolton said that since the proposal does not “necessarily bind” North Korea, it was inadequate and would be rejected. “If the Security Council can’t determine that this is a threat to international peace and security, it’s hard to see what it would determine would be” such a threat, he said.


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