US stance on N. Korea talks ‘is part of containment of China’

The United States is demanding preconditions for the start of talks with North Korea that the communist state can’t possibly accept, and the main reason for it is China, Asia specialist Dr. Tim Beal told RT.

Pyongyang proposed high-level talks with the US without preconditions on Sunday, after North and South Korea cancelled negotiations due to the tension on the Korean peninsula. The US replied that North Korea will be judged "by its actions and not its words."

"Our desire is to have credible negotiations with the North Koreans, but those talks must involve North Korea living up to its obligations to the world, including compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, and ultimately result in denuclearization," US National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

Dr. Tim Beal believes the US simply don’t want to have the negotiations.

RT:The US hasn’t made a decision yet, but it seems reluctant to enter negotiations without preconditions. Why do you think that is?

Tim Beal: I think, probably, they had made the decision and that is the preconditions. The preconditions are there, so the negotiations won’t get off the ground, and it’s simple: if you don’t want to have negotiations then the simplest way to do that (to have no negotiations), the simplest way is to demand preconditions that the other side can’t possibly accept. So that I think is what the Americans are doing. I mean that, there is a question of course is; why they are doing that, why don’t they want to negotiate, and, and that’s the difficult one. I think, basically, I mean a number of reasons, but the main reason is China. They want attention on the Korean Peninsula as part of their containment of China. So, they are very loath to enter negotiations, which would sort of defuse the situation.

RT:Why now, why isn’t Pyongyang offering these talks after a chain of events were there has been warmongering and sabre rattling, why is the timing now for these talks?

TB: Well, I mean,  we had the great increase in tension during March and April, during the American-South Korean exercises and we know this year the Americans really uped the ante increasing  the flights of  B52’s, B2’s, etc. Now I think, basically that  was to stop the, the new government in South Korea, Park Geun-hye, of carrying out the election promise to re-engage the North, so, we saw a lot of tension there, and that naturally dying down with the end of the exercises, that was predictable. Now, we have had, ten day ago, one what it was the overture from the North to the South to start negotiations. Now that, unfortunately, for reasons which are not merely very clear, have fallen over, um, and now I guess it’s a miraculous term. I think we have remembered the whole point from the North Korean side is to force the Americans into negotiating peacefully. That is what it’s really all about from their point of view.

RT:Now, do you think the North, do you see them at all by any stretch abandoning their nuclear ambitions?

TB: Well, they say yes. Now this is the difficult one, because, they say, they are a nuclear weapon state, they remain a nuclear weapon state until two conditions: one is that, the Korean Peninsula is denuclearized and that includes not merely them but South Korea, so, no American tactical weapons, if you like, in South Korea. But the more difficult one is the removal of the threat. Now, it’s very difficult to see how that can possibly be implemented and verified. We have to remember that just a few years ago the Americans made the same offer to Libya and the Libyan’s Muammar Gaddafi scrapped his weapons of mass destruction. The Americans said that if you do this, we will guarantee your security, we won’t topple your government, and then they forgot their promise. So, if I was sitting in Pyongyang , I don’t really know how on Earth can the Americans really convince the Koreans that they are trustworthy. It is very difficult to see how that can be done.