U.N. council struggles to overcome split on North Korea
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1 of 20. North Korean ambassador to the United Nations Sin Son-ho (C) takes a break from an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council regarding the tensions between North and South Korea at the U.N. Headquarters in New York December 19, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson
UNITED NATIONS |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council met in emergency session on Sunday to try to cool tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but the five big powers were split on whether to publicly blame North Korea for the crisis.
Pyongyang raised an alert for artillery units along its west coast in what appeared to be its latest move in a growing crisis between the two Koreas, Yonhap news agency said, quoting a South Korean government source. The report was issued ahead of a planned live-fire drill by South Korea.
South Korea's Defense Ministry offered no immediate comment on the Yonhap report. Bad weather has so far delayed the planned firing drill at a disputed border that has enraged Pyongyang.
Both sides have said they will use military means to defend what they say is their territory off the west coast, raising international concern that the standoff could quickly spiral out of control.
The 15 Security Council members were meeting behind closed doors to try to agree on a statement that Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he hoped would send a "restraining signal" to both the North and the South.
Western envoys inside the meeting said the five permanent veto-wielding members were split over whether to blame North Korea for the crisis, as the United States, Britain, and France -- along with Japan -- demand, or to urge both sides to avoid acts that could deepen the crisis, as Russia and China want.
The Chinese, North Korea's staunchest supporters on the council, and Russians reject the idea of assigning blame to Pyongyang, the envoys told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
RUSSIA, CHINA SEEK COMPROMISE WITH WEST
The U.S., British and French delegations rejected a Russian draft that called for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to send an envoy to Seoul and Pyongyang and urged the two sides to exercise "maximum restraint." Russia and China then revised the text to make it more acceptable to the Western powers.
Western diplomats said the latest Russian and Chinese draft statement condemns a November 23 incident in which North Korean artillery shells killed four people in a South Korean village but does not explicitly blame North Korea for the attack.
However, they said it implicitly blames Pyongyang by referring to a statement by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon the same day, calling the attack "one of the gravest incidents since the end of the Korean War." Ban's statement also made clear North Korea was to blame for the attack.
The new draft is "not perfect but we can probably live with it," one diplomat said. Although the U.S., British, French and Japanese delegations could accept it, South Korea is unhappy with the draft statement because it does not explicitly condemn the North for attacking the South, he said.
Washington has backed Seoul's push to go ahead with the planned live-fire drill on Yeonpyeong island, where four South Koreans were killed in last month's artillery attack.
The drill, within view of the North Korean mainland, is scheduled to take place sometime before Tuesday. U.S. and Chinese officials have described the situation on the Korean Peninsula as "extremely precarious" and a "tinderbox."
Recent Western attempts to get the Security Council to rebuke Pyongyang over the deadly artillery incident and its nuclear program have been blocked by China.
The U.N. Secretariat distributed to council members a document on an investigation of the November 23 shelling by the so-called U.N. Command, the U.S.-led military forces in South Korea that monitor compliance with the 1953 Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War.
That probe concluded the South did not violate the armistice with its November 23 military drills in disputed waters, while the North committed a "deliberate and premeditated attack" that was a "serious violation" of the ceasefire, according to the document, which was obtained by Reuters.
North Korea has called the artillery fire drill by the South a suicidal war move that would trigger all-out conflict on the peninsula and said it would strike back in self-defense.
The South has said if it was attacked in the same manner as last month, it would hit back hard with air power and bombs.
Analysts were skeptical the North would carry through with its threats. The North will likely respond by holding a live-fire drill on its side of the tensely guarded sea border, if the South goes ahead with its exercise, they said.
BAD WEATHER STALLS DRILL
Weather conditions worsened on the normally sleepy Yeonpyeong island, which has been largely abandoned by residents after the November 23 attack.
The South Korean government, widely criticized at home for its perceived weak response to the shelling of the island, remained determined to carry out the exercise. A Defense Ministry official said the weather was the decisive factor.
South Korea's marines plan to test artillery firing from the island targeting its territorial waters to its southwest, the same type of exercise that North Korea last month called an attack and prompted its shelling of the island.
Concern mounted on the island among the few residents who remained, and anticipation was growing that the drill would take place on Monday.
"I see they have to do what they have to do, but the people here want peace and quiet," Dan Choon-nam said after a tearful church service. "We want things to be back to how they were."
(Additional reporting by Kim Do-gyun in Yeonpyeong, Chris Buckley in Beijing; writing by Jack Kim and Patrick Worsnip; editing by Anthony Boadle)
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I’m not a believer in numerology, but it looks like we are going to war on December 21, 2010. We have American consultants on Yeonpyeong Island right now (meaning that if the island is hit, we have that much more incentive to counter-attack (than simply the old agreement from the Korean war).
The maritime and the weather forecasts for the 21st are smooth, sunny and calm.
The showdown at Yeonpyeong on the 21st, while seemingly concocted only by the players themselves (North versus South), was initiated by an unknown submarine. I don’t believe for a second that the world really knows who fired that torpedo. The UN says North Korea, Kim Jong-Il says no way.
We might be right to partially blame South Korea for the questionable response whereby they shot Live Fire Rounds into disputed territory. We would be right to blame Kim-Jong Il for the counter-response — unnecessary shelling of Yeonpyeong. We might even be right to blame South Korea and the United States for not ‘counter-counter responding’ to that recent shelling of Yeonpyeong immediately — since an immediate response would have let the air out of the balloon and been in line with prior tit for tat actions at the boarder.
Instead, the US DOD told South Korea to “wait”, which turned the South Korean people against their leader (The people wanted a swift restrained military response). In response to this political (and probably tactical error), he hired a new General that would be more aggressive. Now we have a replay on Dec. 21st, except this time, South Koreans have promised a massive response to any North Korean bombing, and North Korea has promised Nuclear war inside and beyond the peninsula’s boarders if the drills go forward.
Anyway, the world will never honestly know whose submarine fired that initial torpedo that sunk the South Korean military ship (unless someone on board provides proof).
It is an impossible situation now, and all we can pray is that both sides (North and South) do their normal tit for tat and everything calms down (unlikely this will work:see below). (My estimation is that the North has 20 Nukes and 20 long-range ballistic missiles).
The problem is: if North Korea does restrain, I think someone out there who wants this war (shadow government?) has a backup false flag ready and waiting. (We have 67% of our nuclear powered subs there right now)
Why? The scenario on Dec. 21st calls for controlled media coverage. It calls for a clear day, which could be confused with any other clear day. (Important for later fictional footage). Most importantly, it only calls for one false flag: large artillery shell, torpedo, missile or drone to be fired at one of our ships or South Korea’s ships and or civilian locations — even outside and away from where the action is — like at Seoul.
Now, I don’t want to be too doomsday, but something else bothered me in the news today. Several News articles laid blame with the Obama Administration regarding 2 long range — and one mid-range — missile interception test failures. Here’s one of them: http://www.defpro.com/news/details/20706/?SID=ad915cbf7418e314fc0734e22487347e
My conclusion is that if we are nuked (and the interceptors miss) on the 21st, 22nd or 23rd, blame will go to Obama (which is utterly ridiculous, because he hasn’t had enough time in office to effect the failure or success of interceptor tests through on-the-ground funding). My sense is that there is one “good” piece of news to this: any nuke attack upon the U.S. will happen with warning via missile (not from a ’suitcase’), but this is just speculation, it could be a combination.
The scenario is too controlled, too date sensitive, too mysteriously initiated, too ripe for exploitation (probably by our intelligence agencies).
Unless somebody can stop the drills on December 21, 2010, we (the US) are going to war,and I’m not certain even our own current elected government is entirely opposed to that, simply because North Korea has done such a magnificent job of taunting the world because they have the bomb — and they are only building more and selling many weapons to terrorist states.
My guess is that there will be strikes in the US promptly thereafter, (to tie in Iran and Pakistan and others with North Korea.), and Obama, or a leftover shadow government, will take swift retaliatory action. (For reasons that are too numerous to explain, I think that one of the primary “undisclosed locations” for the shadow government is at the SSC in Waxahachie Texas. I’m fairly certain their redundant DC tier four computer system launched that test missile on November 8, 2010)
I am also fairly confident that China and Russia (outside of any shadow government agreement) have agreed w/the US to stay out of the way if the US makes limited retaliatory nuke strikes outside their boarders. The reason for this is that they understand that too may nukes will completely destroy the planet. The New World Order map becomes clear in a year or two.
I’m putting this out to the universe, in case somebody can make the right contacts to stop the drills.
They SAY, “China resolutely opposes any actions that could inflame tensions and exacerbate the situation”.
Huh? What part of “resolutely opposes” does China NOT understand? They FAILED to “resolutely oppose” North Koreas inflaming tensions and exacerbating the situation for YEARS now.
The whole world knows this. Surely even China must know it. That, by the classic definition, makes them liars. For they know they have NOT “resolutely opposed” North Korea’s belligerence, yet they say they do.
If China does not wake up to reality and read the riot act to their charges in Pyongyang, the Koreans WILL start a war. And then China will have to deal with what they SAY they fear most: a flood of refugees from North Korea.
Or they can try a repeat of what they did in the 50s, before they were part of the UN. But that just might get them kicked out of the UN. After all: US troops are still there under a UN mandate.
But no matter what they do, a renewal of active fighting in Korea will be bad for the whole region — just as the Chinese have been saying. So they had better wake up and do the right thing — finally!
In the meantime, North Korea knows they do not have to believe China, so they feel safe to continue down the path to war.
BTW: the Chinese might not have figured it out yet, but the rest of the world surely has: the N. Korean threat to go nuclear proves what the US has been saying for YEARS now: it is an absolute disaster to allow such a rogue state to have nuclear weapons. It is such a disaster that it justifies the most extreme measures against that rogue state.
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