hankyoreh

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush clarified their willingness to sign a peace treaty in the bilateral summit in Sidney, Australia, on Sept. 7. Now the problem is who, when and how to start discussions on the establishment of a peace regime on the Korean peninsula.

Four nations that took part in the Korean War, the two Koreas, the United States and China, already agreed that they would be party to discussions on a peace regime when they adopted the Joint Statement on Sept. 19, 2005. The statement, reached in the fourth round of the six-party process involving North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, called for the North to fully denuclearize and declare its nuclear weapons and programs in exchange for diplomatic, economic and security guarantees.

The problem is when discussions on a peace regime will begin. None of the related governments have mentioned a specific schedule for this and the delicate atmosphere surrounding the matter is intricately linked with the policies of each country. Washington stresses handling the North’s denuclearization as early as possible, while Pyongyang and Seoul place importance on the normalization of North Korea-U.S. relations and the peace regime, respectively.

In connection with this, a high-ranking Seoul official noted on Sept. 9, “The political mechanism to initiate the four-way talks will be implemented when the North starts to disable its nuclear facilities.”

Another government official mentioned the importance of progress in North Korea-U.S. relations, in that establishment of the peace regime is impossible without bilateral diplomatic normalization. In other words, only when North Korea enters the disablement process, will discussions on the peace regime, as well as those on normalization of relations between the North and the U.S., show more progress.

When the North invited the delegation of nuclear engineers from the United States, China and Russia to visit Yongbyon from Sept. 11-15, concrete measures for nuclear disablement began. If a road map for nuclear disablement and corresponding measures can be made in the second stage of the sixth round of the six-party talks, scheduled for the middle of this month, and the six countries can display their political power through the six-nation foreign ministers’ meeting by the end of October based on the implementation of the road map, it is possible that the international atmosphere needed to discuss a peace regime will have been created to some degree.

In relation to the launch of negotiations on a permanent peace regime on the Korean peninsula, as outlined in the Joint Statement, a high-ranking government official said, “The four related nations will begin negotiations through separate discussions.”

The government seems to have coordinated the schedule of discussions on the peace regime through the ROK-China and ROK-U.S. summit and foreign ministers’ meetings which were held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney over the weekend. South Korean and Chinese leaders thought of the summit as the appropriate time to have made these arrangements.

A remaining problem is the reaction from Pyongyang. As North Korea is one of the four leading players in negotiations on the peace regime, the second inter-Korea summit to be held in Pyongyang from Oct. 2-4 will be significant. If President Roh and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il both acknowledge that now is the time to start discussions between the two Koreas and within the international community, discussions related to building military trust between South and North are also expected to make progress. It is also likely that additional working-group meetings are being considered in conjunction with discussions on forming a peace regime, given the nature and complexity of the issues involved.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]