Russia
urges US and North Korea
to show restraint
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/30/russia-us-north-korea-restraint
'We hope that all parties will exercise maximum
responsibility,' says Russian foreign ministry as tensions continue to rise
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 30 March 2013 13.58 GMT
Russia has urged the US and North Korea to show restraint
after Pyongyang said it was entering a "state of war" with South
Korea in a further escalation of its bellicose rhetoric.
"We hope that all parties will exercise maximum
responsibility and restraint and no one will cross the point of no
return," said senior Russian foreign ministry official Grigory Logvinov on
Saturday.
On Friday the Pentagon declared that the US was flly capable of defending itself and its
allies against a missile attack from North Korea, whose leader, Kim
Jong-un, had declared that rockets were ready to be fired at American bases in
the Pacific. Kim's words came in response to the US flying two nuclear-capable B-2
stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula this week.
On Saturday, a spokesman for the Foreign Office warned North Korea
that its statements would lead to further isolation.
"We have made clear to North Korea that its long-term
interests will only be served by constructive engagement with the international
community. These threatening statements will only seek to isolate it
further," he said.
"The armistice agreement has enabled the Korean
peninsula to benefit from 60 years' peace. Maintaining it is in the best
interests of all."
Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, told reporters
travelling with Barack Obama on Air Force One to Miami:
"The bellicose rhetoric emanating from North Korea only deepens that
nation's isolation. The United
States remains committed to safeguarding our
allies in the region and our interests that are located there."
Asked if the joint US-South Korean military exercises and
the use of the stealth bombers had fuelled the escalation, Earnest replied:
"It's clear that the escalation is taking place from the North Koreans
based on their rhetoric and on their actions."
The Pentagon said on Friday that the US would not be
intimidated, and was ready to defend both its bases and its allies in the
region. Lt Col Catherine Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokesperson, said: "The United States
is fully capable of defending itself and our allies against a North Korean
attack. We are firmly committed to the defence of South
Korea and Japan."
The secretary of state, John Kerry, will visit the region in
a week or so for meetings with Japan,
China and South Korea.
North
Korea announced that its forces had been
placed on high alert on Tuesday but the threats became graver when a picture
was published of Kim reiterating the order at an emergency meeting on Friday.
The US
defence department keeps secret its assessment of the distance North Korea's
missiles can reach. But Admiral James Winnefeld, vice-chairman of the joint
chiefs of staff, said a fortnight ago it had one type of missile capable of
reaching the US.
While defence analysts agreed that North Korea was
theoretically capable of firing a missile, they expressed scepticism about
whether its technology was as advanced as it claims and were doubtful about its
accuracy in hitting targets.
But there is more concern in Washington
than previous standoffs with North
Korea have elicited because Kim is a new
leader, young and inexperienced and a largely unknown quantity in the west.
A major worry is the possibility that North Korea
might attack a South Korean ship – it was blamed for the sinking of a South
Korean vessel in 2010 – or a land target. Seoul
has said that it would retaliate this time.
Wilkinson said: "North Korea's bellicose rhetoric
and threats follow a pattern designed to raise tensions and intimidate others.
DPRK will achieve nothing by threats or provocations, which will only further
isolate North Korea and
undermine international efforts to ensure peace and stability in north-east Asia.
"We continue to urge the North Korean leadership to
heed President Obama's call to choose the path of peace and come into
compliance with its international obligations."
She added: "We remain committed to ensuring peace and
stability on the Korean peninsula. This means deterring North Korean
aggression, protecting our allies and the complete denuclearisation of the
Korean peninsula. The United States
will not accept North Korea
as a nuclear state, nor will we stand by while it seeks to develop a
nuclear-armed missile that can target the United States."
At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, the defence secretary,
Chuck Hagel, said: "There are a lot of unknowns here. But we have to take
seriously every provocative, bellicose word and action that this new, young
leader has taken so far since he's come to power."
Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation and
disarmament programme of the International Institute for Strategic Studies,
played down the threat. "North
Korea is upping its rhetoric to a
world-class level, but it's still just rhetoric. They have no capability to hit
the US
mainland with anything – except through cyberspace. Their only tested missiles
can fly a maximum of 1,600km, less than half the distance to Guam."
Fitzpatrick, who is scheduled to lead a thinktank discussion
at the institute's Washington office next Thursday on whether the US policy of
patience has run its course and whether it should instead pursue reunification
of the Korean peninsula, said on Friday that while North Korea was limited in
its ability to hit US targets, it posed a threat to South Korea and Japan.
"Their Scuds and Nodongs can hit anywhere in South Korea and Japan. Using them would be
suicidal, of course. The far more likely scenario is a pin-prick attack in the
nature of the 2010 attacks. This time, however, South Korea is determined to
respond with an eye for an eye, in order to restore deterrence. North Korea's
ensuing response could trigger a larger conflagration."
Jim Walsh, a specialist on security and nuclear weapons at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, played down the prospect of an
attack on the US,
but said: "The reason it is scary is you can get war even when no one
intends to have a war. All the sides – South
Korea, North
Korea and others – are now leaning into each
other, and if someone makes a mistake, I am concerned that that mistake will
escalate into something larger than anyone expected.
"Suddenly you have a young man in a closed country who
has to decide whether he is going to respond to your actions."
The risk was not of a North Korean attack on the US but of one on South
Korea that would bring in the US, he said.
Walsh, who has visited North Korea and has had talks with
its officials in Switzerland, Sweden and the US, said the present confrontation
felt different because of the harsher rhetoric from North Korea, the secret
defence pact agreed by the US and South Korea and the US military drills this
week.
"If we are lucky it will all be bluster on everyone's
side. That is the good outcome," Walsh said. "The bad outcome is that
it is bluster until someone screws up and then war happens."
Michael O'Hanlon, one of the leading military analysts in
the US, expressed worries
that the US approach of
tit-for-tat and imposition of additional permanent sanctions after North Korea's
third nuclear test could exacerbate the situation. Like Walsh, he sees this
confrontation as being different from previous ones.
In an email, O'Hanlon, a security specialist at Washington's Brookings Institution, said: "I favour
temporary sanctions in response to the third nuclear test, to give Pyongyang an incentive
not to provoke again." He argues that setting a time limit such as two,
three or four years could encourage North Korea not to conduct another
nuclear test.
"I am talking about automatic sunset provisions with a
specific timeframe, unless of course there is another nuclear test or another
act of violence," O'Hanlon said.