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A senior government official said Thursday it was not North Korea but the United States that was creating obstacles in the initial stages of six-party talks on the nuclear dispute. "The U.S. has proposed including North Korean human rights in a written agreement¡± that departs from a rough draft already prepared by South Korea, the U.S. and Japan. The draft envisaged a joint offer by the three countries, he went on, but now they must each propose their independent solutions. Washington came out of left field on Wednesday when in its keynote speech it called for both human rights and North Korea¡¯s conventional missiles to be included in negotiations.
The question whether to deal with North Korea's human rights issue in this round, and if so to what extent, could be make or break for the talks. If the senior government official is to be believed, the three countries specifically agreed not to include human rights when they coordinated their approaches, but the U.S. performed an about-turn at the last minute.
Needless to say, the urgency of improving human rights in North Korea cannot be over-emphasized. There is even a sense in which Pyongyang¡¯s human rights abuses and nuclear program cannot be considered separately, because they are both the result of the Stalinist country¡¯s international isolation, which has caused it to turn on its own people. But the goal of the six-party talks is to resolve the nuclear dispute. If the human rights issue is to be dealt with in the same fell swoop, the negotiations will get too complicated, and that could offer the North a fresh excuse to boycott the talks.
It would be a better idea to deal with the human rights issue through the UN Human Rights Commission or arrange for separate negotiations. Of course the U.S. may simply be raising North Korean human rights as a negotiating strategy, but it had better reconsider eyeing it as a goal for the talks.
Neither, for that matter, should North Korea try to broaden the agenda with the last-minute introduction of the ambiguous concept of a "nuclear-free zone" and attempts to dissolve the Seoul-Washington alliance. This round must bring a breakthrough in the nuclear stalemate, and for that to happen the agenda should be pared down to the essentials so that all parties can focus on the same goal. Even then will it be difficult enough to find a solution.
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