(and the Leftists are Silent)

Mendacity in Beijing
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu

In a Freedom House sponsored conference in Washington, DC two weeks ago,
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Deputy Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los
Angeles, strode to the podium carrying an empty chair. He placed the chair
down firmly and declared that it was the symbolic seat for the "seventh
participant at the Six Party talks, the voiceless people of North Korea." At
the first formal meeting of the Six Party talks in more than a year, held on
July 26 in Beijing, the participants not only ignored the chair, they tipped
it over. In a display of cynical cruelty both American and South Korea
diplomats - who supposedly have the moral foundation and fortitude needed to
stand up for the downtrodden - not only disregarded the wellbeing of the
starving, imprisoned people of North Korea but had the audacity to behave as
if the meeting was a huge success.

Stunningly, any reference to human rights was intentionally kept off the
agenda, but even worse, the South Korean representative, Deputy Foreign
Minister Song Min Soon, had the gall to lay down the law to Japan. The
Japanese people have been especially upset about North Korean admissions
that its agents have kidnapped scores - perhaps hundreds - of innocent
civilians from Japan over the past few decades. Many of the abductees are
women and children who are used to train North Korean agents. These agents
are either dispatched to conduct espionage within Japan or are used in
active terrorist operations and fall back on a Japanese "cover" if
apprehended. This issue has raised such a firestorm within Japan that Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi refused to eat with Kim Jong Il at their last
meeting, and instead brought his own food as a protest against the
intransigence of the North Korean regime.

So for a South Korean foreign ministry official to warn Japan that "it would
definitely not be desirable to take up issues that would disintegrate the
focus of the talks," was an arrogant statement that reaffirmed what analysts
suspected all along: that strategic weapons issues and economics would once
again overrule human rights in the mendacious atmosphere of the Six Party
talks. Naturally the US representative, Assistant Secretary of State
Christopher Hill, went along with the flow. All of his comments dealt with
delusional "progress." Tellingly, Hill abjectly conceded the initiative to
the North when he said "we do not have the option of walking away from this
problem [of North Korean nuclear disarmament]."

Not that America has ever had the initiative in these talks. For years Kim
Jong Il has been yanking the US chain harder than a model in a Bow Flex
commercial. US representatives to the Six Party talks make public
pronouncements as if they are in control. But whenever Kim Jong Il is
pressured and needs to delay, he feigns a fit of pique and boycotts the
talks. If his hollow economy squeezes too hard and he needs some material
support he grandiosely announces he will attend "in return for security
concessions by the imperialists." US officials waffle like a sine wave in
reaction to Kim's calculated mood swings. They cling to the delusion that
while Kim turns the crank on the organ, and they beg pennies with a cup,
that somehow the monkey is in control of the operation. What is
extraordinarily reprehensible is the State Department's inability to do what
it is supposed to do best: control diplomatic negotiations.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy disregards explicit policy guidance. Late last
year both houses of Congress unanimously passed the North Korean Human
Rights Act. It was immediately signed into law by President Bush. The law
demands that in all dealings with the North Koreans that human rights for
the long-suffering people of North Korea be placed on the table for
discussion along with any other issues, nuclear, chemical, or missile. This
is not mere policy or guidance - either of which would demand obedience from
a loyal staff - but is the law of the land, duly filed and recorded.

The flagrant, offhanded disregard for this law is stunning but not unusual.
Readers know that I am consistently critical of the State Department
(closely followed by the CIA and FBI) as being the most dysfunctional of all
Executive Branch agencies. Officer selection is anachronistic, training is
incestuous, arrogance is consummate, and the union flies top cover for all
FSOs deflecting criticism and threats of dismissal. Nevertheless, a great
deal of responsibility for the behavior of the middle managers lies with a
leadership failure at the top, at the levels appointed by the President.
This includes, to my acute disappointment, Secretary Rice and her appointed
staff. To be fair it is terribly difficult to be a cabinet secretary and
conduct a top-to-bottom house cleaning of such a key department.
Nevertheless, someone must eventually say that enough is enough and take on
the challenge for reform.

Meanwhile, those of us who read reports that North Korean people have had
their meager government food ration cut to 200 g daily (520 g is the world
standard for survival), while well-fed diplomats preen around conference
tables and pose for grip-and-grin photo ops, grind our teeth in frustration.
As long as the Six Party talks continue on a flawed policy of separation of
strategic arms discussion from human rights issues - which are catastrophic
in North Korea - then the outcome of the talks is predestined to failure.
Such luminaries as Natan Sharansky, who has through his own experience seen
what happens in such a case, call for a gathering of nations to produce a
policy similar to the Helsinki Accords that linked human rights to strategic
issues and in so doing finally brought about freedom for Eastern Europe and
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Such an accord would be incredibly more
productive that the current failed Six Party talks and would recognize our
moral responsibility to free the people of North Korea.

Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu has been an Army Green Beret lieutenant colonel, as
well as a writer, popular speaker, business executive and farmer. His most
recent book is Separated at Birth, about North and South Korea.

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