New York Times
The Right Resolution
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
ASHINGTON ― The menace of Saddam has driven a wedge in the world, with Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing on the side of unending delay, and with the great majority of democratic nations with Washington and London-led Europe on the side of action.
But an even greater divide ― a glaring inconsistency in argument that exposes a weakness in principle ― exists within the camp that opposes the U.S.
For the past year, the central message that Saddam's protectors have been sending to the U.S. is: Do not "go it alone." On the contrary, take the multilateral route. Seek the world's support through U.N. consensus.
But when it comes to the weaponry menace on the other side of the world, the message of Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing is exactly the opposite.
The clear message that the coalition of the unwilling sends Washington about North Korea, which confessed its secret nuclear buildup, then ejected U.N. inspectors just as Saddam did four years ago, is this: Go it alone, America. Korea's nukes and long-range missiles are your problem, not the world's. Hold bilateral talks as the Koreans insist, pay them off as you tried to do before and forget all we have been saying about multilateralism. You work it out with them alone; we'll hold your coat.
That is no minor inconsistency. Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
U.N. nuclear inspectors who want another year or so to play hide-and-seek in Iraq cannot profess similar ignorance about North Korea. Caught red-handed by U.S. intelligence, Pyongyang's leaders kicked out inspectors, tore up a nonproliferation treaty and threatened the whole world with war if anyone dared impose economic consequences.
Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted 31 to 0 (with Russia abstaining, calling it "premature") to cite North Korea for ignoring nuclear safeguards and tossed the ticking nuclear time bomb to the Security Council.
Where it sits. Because nobody wants to touch it, Council members point to the U.S. to pay another round of ransom. But the foot-dragging four don't want to get involved in helping the U.S. disarm North Korea while they are busy drawing up another resolution stopping a U.S.-led coalition from disarming Iraq.
One way to solve a problem is to spread it out. Instead of staying on the defensive within the Security Council on Iraq, fiddling with the wording of another final-final, we-really-mean-it scrap of paper, Colin Powell should promptly present a resolution on North Korea.
No threat of economic sanctions yet. Just an unequivocal statement by the world body that North Korea is in material breach of its treaty obligations, with chapter and verse of what the I.A.E.A. reported. Our resolution should call on North Korea to meet with its neighbors most immediately concerned ― South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, the Philippines and the U.S. ― to negotiate a solution to a threat to peace.
Would France cast its veto? Unlikely; it left Asia at Dien Bien Phu. Would Russia abstain? Probably; as the Saddam issue has shown, President Putin's soul is not what President Bush thought it was. Would Britain be with us? Yes. Among the five permanent members, that leaves China.
China may well veto even such a toothless resolution because the U.N. would be asserting a truth that North Korea denies: the nuclear threat posed by Pyongyang would best be met by a multilateral response. But the need to decide would focus China's new leadership on the downside of a veto and the foolishness of its current let-Uncle-Sam-do-it policy.
Beijing knows that Japan's defense minister, Shigeru Ishiba, has already called for consideration of a Japanese missile defense, presaging quick work on Tokyo's nuclear deterrent. Taiwan would do the same, also presenting the independent-minded on that island with a potent equalizer to Beijing's military superiority.
Is that fallout what China wants, as well as the erosion of its huge trade surplus with the U.S.? Better to lean on its Communist neighbor, hegemonist heads in Beijing will say, than to invite international sanctions that would drive masses of hungry Koreans into China, or cause those cowboys in Washington to assert their strength one day in Asia as they surely will in the Middle East.
