I continue to be amazed… To reward North Korea for its international belligerence, Obama dispatches Bill Clinton to meet with Kim Jong Il? This is like rewarding a child for throwing a tantrum to be taken to the state fair, with a visit to Disney World… I guess the question to ask is whether Obama has ever met a despot he did NOT like…
Then again, this is from a President who thinks economic growth comes from a guy who thinks the Cash for Clunkers program is a way to achieve economic growth…
Bill Clinton, who flew into North Korea today on a surprise mission to secure the release of two American journalists, was taken from the airport into a rare face-to-face meeting with the regime’s “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong Il.
The unexpected summit meeting has raised hopes across the region that North Korea may soon be enticed back to multinational disarmament talks after three months of mounting atomic tensions and provocation.
North Korea’s official news agency reported that Mr Clinton and Mr Kim engaged in “sincere and exhaustive discussions” on a range of issues and that the former US president came armed for his encounter with a “courteously conveyed” personal message from Barack Obama. The White House quickly denied there had ever been such a message.
In another striking break with tradition, footage of Mr Clinton’s arrival and images of his meeting with Mr Kim were aired almost immediately on North Korea’s tightly-controlled state television channel – an indication, said close observers of North Korea, of how the visit will likely be used by the regime to parade its out-manoeuvring of the US.
It appears that the groundwork for the talks were well-laid and that Mr Clinton is likely to return to the US with the two journalists in tow on Wednesday. Although nominally carried out in a private capacity, Mr Clinton’s visit is believed to have the double purpose of both freeing Laura Ling and Euna Lee from their sentence of 12 years hard labour and of bringing North Korea back to the negotiating table on nuclear weapons.
Relations between Washington and Pyongyang have deteriorated rapidly since May after the unpredictable regime test-fired what it said was a nuclear device and declared the six party” multinational disarmament talks with South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, America “dead in the water”.
The Pyongyang state news agency put what experts said was a predictable spin on the visit, declaring that Mr Clinton had first appealed for the release of the two American prisoners and then for the opportunity to meet Mr Kim – a request that was graciously granted.
Veteran analysts of North Korea criticised the visit as playing directly into the propaganda needs of a weakened regime facing a selection of dire domestic crises, including poverty and famine. Brian Myers, an expert on Pyongyang ideology, said that the visit would allow the regime to portray America as paying tribute to the nuclear-armed kingdom and that the arrival of the such a high-profile American figure was effectively a reward for bad behaviour. It the second time that a former US president has flown into the DPRK to help ease tensions in a nuclear crisis: Jimmy Carter did so in 1994.
The Clinton visit comes amid deepening mystery over the visibly declining health of Mr Kim and the question of what, if any, succession plans he has put in place.
Some analysts believe that the May nuclear test was an attempt by an ailing Mr Kim to demonstrate domestically that he was indeed in full control: the provocative tests may have left him needing a face-saving route through which to return to disarmament talks of the sort Mr Clinton’s visit may now provide.
Even before it emerged that Mr Clinton and Mr Kim would meet, the signs of a breakthrough appeared good. Critically, the welcome party on the airport tarmac included Kim Kye-gwan – the regime’s chief nuclear negotiator at the six party talks.
Nevertheless, the release of the two imprisoned American women will be a significant coup for Mr Clinton.
The two journalists, Ms Ling and Ms Lee, who were both working for a television company founded by Mr Clinton’s former vice president, Al Gore, were arrested for a “grave”, though unspecified, crime on the North Korea-China border earlier this year. It is widely thought that they did deliberately cross over the border, suggesting that Mr Clinton’s tactic is more likely to be a plea for clemency and a possible private offer of financial compensation than anything more politically aggressive. The two women were imprisoned on a charge of committing “hostile acts” and for plotting to produce a smear campaign over human rights issues.
Although the visit now appears to have taken place with the full support of the White House, Mr Clinton’s party does not include government officials from Washington. Mr Clinton’s wife Hillary, the US Secretary of State, is under increasing domestic pressure to harden her stance on North Korea and said in June that she would consider returning the regime to the official list of state sponsors of terrorism. The nuclear-armed “hermit state” was only removed from the list in 2008.
In raw intelligence terms the value of the visit may be spectacular. Mr Clinton is the highest-profile American to visit North Korea since Madeleine Albright’s trip nine years ago, and the audience with Kim Jong Il provides an up-close glimpse of a man at the heart of a thousand rumours and the key player in one of the world’s most delicate diplomatic games.
Last month, Mr Kim was pictured attending a ceremony to mark the anniversary of his father’s death: his skeletal, sunken face was a striking contrast with former images of a chubbier, more animated Dear Leader. The footage appeared to confirm reports that he is suffering from long-term illness. June and July also provided a steady stream of unconfirmed reports concerning Kim Jong-un – the dictator’s youngest son and supposedly the most likely successor as leader of the regime.
During his presidency, Mr Clinton attempted to improve relations between Washington and Pyongyang and made considerable progress. Hopes for an end to decades of acrimony and the vision of normalised relations were temporarily raised by the visit of Ms Albright, his then Secretary of State, in 2000. Those hopes faded shortly afterwards when President George W Bush later included North Korea in his list of “axis of evil” members and relations soured once again.
