The U.S. once again included North Korea among state sponsors of terrorism in the ¡°2006 Country Reports on Terrorism¡± released Monday. Being taken off the list is expected to be one of the rewards if the Stalinist country shuts down its nuclear facilities under a Feb. 13 six-nation agreement. But the North has not yet started implementing its part of the deal, and it remains to be seen how it will react to Monday¡¯s slap on the wrist.
¡ß Why is North Korea on the list?
In a briefing, the acting coordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department, Frank Urbancic, cited two reasons. "As you may know, we have an agreement or we reached an agreement this year, so it's not technically covered, although it's in the 2006 report." He meant the report is retrospective for last year and so has nothing to do with North Korea's implementation of the Feb. 13 agreement. Urbancic added the six-party agreement ¡°is not a decision to take them off. It's just a decision to begin the process to begin the discussion." Secondly, Urbancic said, ¡°coming off that list is quite a long process. You may recall how long it took us to work on Libya. The same types of things the North Koreans will have to do."
Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi declared he was abandoning all terrorism and nuclear development programs in 2003 and later handed over all nuclear facilities. The ¡°Country Reports¡± say that since it promised to give up terrorism, Libya cooperated with the U.S. and the international community in the fight against terrorism. Urbancic said despite such efforts, Libya only came off the list last June, about three years later. If North Korea were to be removed from the list, it will also first have to forswear terrorism and cooperate fully with the U.S. for a certain period.
However, many experts in Washington regard the latest report as a political decision that has little to do with legal procedures. They believe that the ¡°Country Reports¡± reflects especially the position of Japan, while many doubt that North Korea has any intention to implement the Feb. 13 agreement.
¡ß Less background, more questions
This year's ¡°Country Reports¡± gives only a very brief explanation for including North Korea, opening the possibility that it may soon be struck from the list. The North Korea section in the report has a mere seven lines of wording, the shortest among the five remaining state sponsors of terrorism (the others are Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria). Like last year, the report adds North Korea is ¡°not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987."
For no apparent reason, the section omits last year¡¯s sentence that the South Korean government ¡°estimates that approximately 485 civilians were abducted or detained since the 1950-53 Korean War." In other words, the seven-line background reasoning concerns only two issues ? that North Korea has not said enough about the whereabouts of 12 Japanese abduction victims and four Japanese Red Army members who remain in North Korea since their involvement in a jet hijacking in 1970.
The report added, "In the February 13, 2007 Initial Actions Agreement, the U.S. agreed to begin the process of removing the designation of (North Korea) as a state-sponsor of terrorism." This suggests that if North Korea cooperates with Japan to solve these two issues, it could be removed from the list. In other words, Washington¡¯s inclusion of North Korea among state sponsors of terrorism is neither a U.S.-North Korean nor inter-Korean issue, but a Japanese-North Korean issue.
¡°Country Reports on Terrorism¡± is released once a year, but a country can be removed from the state sponsors list at any time.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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