Pyongyang not appeased by Bush's softer speech

By Hamish McDonald

February 7, 2005

North Korea remains unmollified by President George Bush's relatively soft line towards it in his State of the Union speech last week, and China is preparing further heavy persuasion to bring it back into nuclear disarmament talks.

In the first reaction from the North Korean capital to the speech, Radio Pyongyang quoted President Bush as predicting the fire of freedom would flare up in every corner of the world.

"But that means the United States will have the freedom to throw the world into a sea of battle fires," it said in a broadcast on Friday, monitored in South Korea.

Most analysts saw Mr Bush's speech as placatory - certainly compared to his address three years ago when he included North Korea in an "Axis of Evil" along with Iran and then Saddam Hussein-ruled Iraq. His only direct mention was a single sentence: "We're working closely with the governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions."

But the soft line came against a background of tough words about North Korea, including its listing as an "outpost of tyranny" by new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in her Senate confirmation hearing last month.

The day after his speech, Mr Bush spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and discussed intensifying the pressure on the North Koreans to return to the six-party disarmament talks in Beijing, stalled since a third meeting last June.

Mr Koizumi's Government is taking a harsher line towards North Korea since DNA testing of the purported remains of kidnapped Japanese citizens handed back by Pyongyang turned out to be those of different people.

Officials are talking of applying economic sanctions authorised by the Japanese Parliament last year, which include tighter environmental rules that would exclude most North Korean ships from Japanese ports, and food-labelling rules that would prevent North Korean produce being passed off as Japanese in origin.

China, which is sponsoring the talks, is likely to send a senior envoy to Pyongyang soon after the Chinese New Year holiday week starting on Wednesday, according to the South Korean Minister for Unification of the Korean peninsula, Chung Dong Young.

North Korea's past attendance has been preceded by similar missions, some to the highest level of the Chinese Communist Party, which have reportedly involved a mixture of threats and cash inducements.

Meanwhile, North Korea's embassy in Prague has reportedly demanded that the Czech Republic ban the spoof film Team America: World Police on the grounds that it harms their country's reputation and ridicules their leader, Kim Jong-il.

- With AP, Reuters, AFP

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