By MARGIE MASON (AP)21 July, 2010
HANOI, Vietnam — North Korea's top diplomat will be on a damage control mission this week at an Asian security meeting, pleading innocent to the sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors and has been widely blamed on Pyongyang, an analyst said Wednesday.
North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun, making a rare trip abroad, was expected to arrive in Hanoi on Wednesday amid lingering tensions in the region four months after the sinking.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations issued a statement following a foreign ministers' meeting Tuesday condemning the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan, without pointing fingers. The North has denied any involvement.
Experts were not expecting any meetings to occur between Pak, South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan or U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton when they attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' Regional Forum on Friday.
South Korea and U.S. remain adamant that North Korea apologize for the incident — or face punishment. With Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Seoul for security talks, the longtime allies announced they would hold four days of joint military exercises starting Sunday to make a strong statement of unity to North Korea.
The drills are bound to draw objections from North Korea and China, said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean affairs at Dongguk University in Seoul.
South Korea on Wednesday ruled out any chance of a bilateral meeting with the North.
"Reconciliation is possible only when the North shows an apologetic attitude over its provocation," a Foreign Ministry official said in Seoul, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council approved a statement that condemned the sinking — but stopped short of directly assigning blame. The North has called the statement its "great diplomatic victory" and has warned any punishment would trigger war. An international investigation in May concluded that North Korean torpedoed the ship.
"Pyongyang will be mainly interested in damage control at this meeting, in preventing any strong statements against it, and will otherwise seek to reassure what few friends it has left in the region that it was really not to blame," said Ralph Cossa, president of Pacific Forum CSIS, a Hawaii think tank.
ASEAN leaders, however, have expressed hope that some type of contact may be attempted to help re-ignite stalled six-nation talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. All members of the talks will attend Friday's meeting.
"ASEAN has been saying, 'Look, all six of you are in the (ASEAN Regional Forum) so why not make use of this forum and the process here?'" ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan told reporters on the sidelines of Wednesday's meetings with China, Japan and South Korea. "We hope that will be met with a positive response."
In addition to deflecting blame from the ship incident, the isolated North may try to drum up much-needed support from its Asian neighbors.
Communist North Korea is one of the most world's most reclusive nations, with few allies and a willingness to defy international conventions that has earned the regime pariah status.
The Korean peninsula remains in a state of war because a peace treaty was never signed to end the three-year Korean War of the 1950s, and Pyongyang cites the presence of 28,500 U.S. troops on South Korean soil as a main reason for building up its atomic program.
After years of negotiations with its neighbors to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for much-needed aid, North Korea walked away from the talks in 2009 and defied the U.N. Security Council by testing an atomic weapon just weeks later.
Hampered by U.N. sanctions and desperate for aid, North Korea has steadily sought to build relations with Southeast Asian nations, particularly Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Earlier this week, Southeast Asia's foreign ministers questioned Myanmar about allegations it may be interested in pursuing a nuclear weapons program, perhaps with help from North Korea. Myanmar's reclusive military-run government has denied having any atomic ambitions. Pak will travel to Myanmar, Indonesia and Laos after departing Vietnam. It is the third time he has left his country in as many years.
The visit to Myanmar "will no doubt also ruffle some feathers within as well as beyond ASEAN as many states are curious about what the two are really up to," Cossa said.
Associated Press writers Jim Gomez in Hanoi, and Kwang-tae Kim and Jean H. Lee in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
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