Naked Games

Another war anyone?

OK. So, where were we?

That’s right, multilateral talks in Beijing were about to stop North Korea blowing up the world.

The talks wrapped up Friday 29 August. Can’t you just feel the waves of pacifism flowing over the globe?

The opening photo call saw the representatives from North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States huddled together clasping hands like a North American sports team.

It was deeply moving.

Come Friday, the mood had started to change. The delegates came out of the talks with smiles, the US said it was “pleased” and James Kelly, US assistant secretary of state talked of “a nice visit and a productive start.”

Lovely.

However, by the time the negotiators entered the departure lounge at Beijing airport, North Korea declared it had had enough of talking and was preparing to strengthen its nuclear arsenal. As he left to board his plane, an unidentified member of the North Korean negotiating team told reporters that “We’re no longer interested.”

Peace in our time.

Shortly afterward, as the other delegates enjoyed their complimentary glasses of champagne, North Korea issued a statement confirming its intention to explode a nuclear device. “The talks have made us believe that we have no other choice but to strengthen our nuclear deterrent force,” it said. “We are not interested at all in this kind of talks and do not have any hopes.”

Oh, great!

This, of course, was ammunition for Washington’s hawks. Talk to these people, and look what you get – stabbed in the back.

American officials responded by saying that if North Korea conducted a nuclear test, President Bush (whose month-long loll on the ranch ended this week) would be forced to impose economic quarantine. North Korea said this would be an act of war. “The United States is demanding that we take off all our clothes until we are naked,” the KCNA said.

So, what happened?

There was no joint statement at the conclusion of the talks, but Chinese officials, appearing quite pleased with themselves, said that all sides had agreed to meet again within two months.

Naturally, there is a great degree of scepticism about everything Pyongyang says. This could be another bluff. However, the New York Times reports “officials in Washington and several Asian diplomats said there was a significant danger that the crisis would intensify.”

One senior Asian official, described by the NYT as “deeply involved in the talks”, was quoted as saying, “Their public position is that this all went well, because the North Koreans saw how many countries are lined up against them. But there is a real fear that Kim Jong-il sees that the US is distracted in Iraq, and thinks this is the moment to make it clear he has the bomb.”

In other words, the US came away pleased that China, Russia and co. were putting the squeeze on “Dear Leader” Kim (Hu Jintao reportedly sent personal messages to Dr. Evil threatening to cut China’s economic assistance), but none too clearer about what exactly North Korea is up to and what can and should be done about it.

In the sober words of the NYT, “North Korea regularly issues barbed statements and vows to inflict harsh punishment on its enemies, but it often does not deliver on its threats.”

No doubts then that North Korea is playing a game of its own design – it called the US demands “a game even kids won’t play”. But the nation is one big enigma. No-one is certain what’s for real and what for show. It now has no real allies, which only serves to make its next move even more unpredictable.

Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) put it bluntly. “I don’t think they can be trusted,” he said.

The US is caught between options, none of them guaranteed to deliver the required results. “We’re trying to essentially force the North Koreans to change their regime without regime change,” Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution told the BBC. “This is not an easy deal for the North Koreans to accept.”

Sure enough, by Tuesday, North Korea was piping a different tune. “We have not yet changed our firm will to resolve the nuclear problem between the DPRK and the United States through dialogue,” the KCNA said, contradicting everything it said a few days before.

Next up is a US-South Korean meeting in Washington.

By business then

While all this was going on, and before South Korea issued a warning to the North not to pull out of the negotiations and develop nuclear weapons, a “landmark agreement” was signed between the two Koreas to increase direct trade.

It’s a crazy world.

This agreement was the result of bilateral talks – nothing to do with the multilaterals in Beijing. South Korean giant Hyundai is building an industrial park in the town of Kaesong, north of the border . The aim is to encourage more South Korean firms to relocate to the North, with its cheap labour.

The BBC reports that $270 million of trade has been done between North and South this year, but almost all of it through intermediary countries.

Is North Korea opening up? Great timing.

(Click here to read more on the dire economic situation in North Korea)

Chinese changes

The Beijing talks marked what Jing-dong Yuan in the International Herald Tribune calls “a turning point in China’s foreign policy.”

Though not, it would seem, the only one.

It emerged this week that the Chinese army is to be reduced by another 200,000 men by the end of 2004.

Perhaps China is trying to point the way for North Korea who has a million troops parked on the border with the South, draining money from Pyongyang.

The last few years has seen the People’s Liberation Army cut by 500,000. The latest cuts amount to about 10% of the existing force.

Significantly, the cuts were announced by Jiang Zemin, former president and powerful chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. The (London) Times judged that Jiang “reasserted his position of power in the Chinese government” and that “the appointment in March of Hu Jintao as head of state may not yet have become a full handover of power.”

China, however, has not gone pacifist. Over the last two years, the country has increased its defence budget by 27.6%.

The money will go into technology and training. Warfare, of course, is no longer about men on the ground.

Meanwhile, the pressure is being felt in Beijing from the US to overhaul its currency system. US treasury secretary John Snow visited Beijing this week. He wants China to allow market forces to set the value of the yuan.

Many people in the US “argue that China is stealing their business through mercantilist policies and currency manipulation” (New York Times).

“Like it or not, China and the US are married,” Andy Xie, chief Asia economist for Morgan Stanley told the paper.

But China was having none of it. “There won’t be any change in the exchange rate just because someone is visiting China,” a spokesman for the People’s Bank of China told Reuters.

Pressure is also coming from Japan. There’s even talk of future trade sanctions.

All this in the week China launched its marketing plan for the 2008 Olympics in a ceremony attended by 600 business suits and bureaucrats.

Selling marketing rights, corporate sponsorships and licensing doesn’t sound too communist, the Diary can’t help noticing, but never mind.

The IOC thinks Beijing 2008 will bring in more bucks than any previous Olympic event. “The games will open the gates to the most important market in the world,” said IOC president Jacques Rogge. “There has never been a marketing combination so powerful and so full of promise.”

What would Mao Tse-tung say?

Drugs for sale

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) reached a deal this week that will finally allow access to cheap drugs for some of the world’s poorest countries.

WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell called it “one of the most important decisions” in the history of the organisation. Negotiations have taken two years.

The US lifted its opposition on agreement that countries would act “in good faith” and not abuse the patenting system.

Progress at last.

The deal requires the drugs to be controlled by public groups, and the shape, colour and packaging must be distinguishable from drugs sold for profit in other markets. The US doesn’t want to see cheap drugs being sold in rich western markets.

The agreement comes in time for the Cancún summit September. The WTO can now turn its attention to agriculture.

Listless activists

And, in fact, it already has.

A French judge rejected a request by anti-globalisation hero José Bové this week to travel to Mexico and blow pipe smoke at the Cancún summit.

Bové left jail last month. He is now quarantined in his beloved France and is calling for widespread protests ahead of the summit.

Ironic, really. Bové, a farmer who enjoys smashing McDonald’s and GM crops, is exactly the kind of person the WTO will be under pressure to stop being massively subsidised by the European Union, thereby opening access to markets to developing countries.

Bové plans to hold a “symbolic demonstration” in Cancon, a small south-western French town.

Meanwhile, the (Manchester and London) Guardian reports that a “watch list” has been drawn up by Mexican security forces of eighty anti-globalisation activists. The list has “provoked an angry response – from those whose names are missing.”

That’s right. According to the liberal Guardian, “hundreds of activists who also plan to attend the event have demanded that their names be included as worthy of surveillance.”

The Diary will reserve judgment on this one.

A letter of signatories addressed to “Government Agents Bent on Restricting Civil Liberties” complains that the government agents are not bent enough on restricting the civil liberties of enough individuals.

The letter reads: “Haven’t you noticed that the tide of public opinion is turning decidedly against the WTO? ... Please add my name to your ‘watch list’ immediately!”

The letter accuses the WTO of having “a ‘free’ trade agenda that impoverish [sic] the majority of us while enriching a few corporations.”

Said Tom Hansen of the Mexico Solidarity Network, “We’ve received calls from people all over the hemisphere demanding to know why their names were omitted from the list despite the fact that they’ve attended protests against the WTO, lobbied their legislators and educated their communities about the dangers of the WTO.”

Put these community educators on the list! Now!

Golden fortune

Finally, some good news from Afghanistan – finally!

Fourteen years of civil war and Taliban rule and the vault in the presidential palace never saw the light of day. Last opened in 1989, the vault survived a number of failed attempts by the Taliban to do with the doors as they did with the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Instead, it took local locksmiths to prise the thing open. Inside were national assets worth $90 million.

Televised pictures were broadcast across the country this week showing President Hamid Karzai drooling over a wooden box filled with gold bullion bars – “Finally, this job pays off!”

Karzai said, “Today, with the grace of Allah Almighty, we have succeeded in seeing the central treasure of Afghanistan. Fortunately, it is in place.”

Quotes of the week

“Bodybuilders party a lot, and once in Gold’s (a California gym) there was a black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together.”
A controversial statement by would-be California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made when he was 29 in adult magazine Oui under the title “Arnold Schwarzenegger on the sex secrets of bodybuilders”. The interview, in which Arnie also admitted to using drugs, has been doing the prime time rounds in California this week.

“Obviously, I’ve made statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that’s the way I always was. I was always outrageous, otherwise I wouldn’t have done the things that I did in my career, with the bodybuilding and the show business and all those things. I was always out there.”
Arnie’s response.

“We are very concerned about the report of Arnold’s promiscuity and he must come forward and tell us if it stopped when he was 29 or if it continued.”
Reverend Louis Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition

“Many of you might have heard the hissing of the snakes, the servants of the infidel occupation invaders, who – after the killing of al-Hakim – rushed to accuse, without any evidence, those they called the supporters of Saddam Hussein of the incident.”
A voice said to be that of Saddam Hussein broadcast on Arab television channels this week denying involvement in the bomb in Najaf on Friday that killed 80 people, including Ayatollah Muhammed Baqr al-Hakim.

“God curse money! What is money for? With money we defend our country.”
Colonel Gaddafi of Libya in a speech marking the 34th anniversary of his coup. Libya agreed this week to pay compensation for the bombing of a French airliner in 1989.

“If I am president, I will never forget that even a nation as powerful as the United States needs some friends in the world.”
US Senator John Kerry formally launching his campaign for the presidency.

Contact the Diary Editor: Dominic.Hilton@openDemocracy.net