Vice President Lu promotes peace at security seminar

 

CNA , TAIPEI

 

Vice President Annette Lu said yesterday that war is not the solution to problems and that peace is the only option for mankind.

 

Lu made the remarks when she received foreign guests attending a regional security seminar over the weekend in Taipei at the Presidential Office.

 

Lu noted that the International Seminar on Asia-Pacific Cooperative Security is significant because it comes at a time when the US-led forces have been waging war in Iraq for the past two weeks.

 

The vice president spoke of three "wars" currently being waged in the world: the one in Iraq, the one to fight the potentially deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the looming conflict against North Korea because of the reactivation of its nuclear facilities.

 

Lu said that "mankind is now in the midst of World War III," although the means and locations of this "war" are distinctively different from the previous two world wars.

 

The outbreak of SARS has become a far more serious issue than first thought, Lu said, adding that because China was slow to reveal information on SARS, the infectious disease was able to travel across the globe.

 

She said that the conventional concept of national security is confined to national defense and military capabilities, but the outbreak of SARS has forced a rethink; security should also include public health and quarantine issues.

 

"One must never ignore the issues of mankind when talking about security in this century," she said.

 

Lu said that the anti-war protests around the world have shown that war is not the answer; peace is the only solution.

 

Reducing the SARS damage

 

The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak is causing considerable panic in Taiwan. The impact of such panic on society and the economy is also expanding by the day. Public attention is currently focused on the disease, but the administration must face up to the outbreak's impact on other aspects of society as well, including the economy, and adopt appropriate measures to minimize the negative impacts.

 

As of yesterday, Taiwan has reported 122 "suspected" SARS cases and 20 "probable" cases. In other words, the outbreak has not been serious -- an indication that epidemic control measures are bearing fruit.

 

But many Taiwanese still turn pale at the mention of SARS. People wearing masks can be seen at bus stops, shopping malls and even night clubs and irrational behavior is starting to take root. Educating the public and allaying collective fears are no doubt the most urgent tasks facing the government.

 

SARS has dealt a deadly blow to the tourism industry, cutting the number of Taiwanese tourists travelling abroad by 80 percent to 90 percent. The number of foreigners visiting Taiwan has also fallen by more than 50 percent. The fear factor has also reduced domestic tourism activities by 70 percent to 80 percent. According to estimates from the tourism industry, at least half of Taiwan's travel agencies may go bankrupt if the SARS situation does not improve. That may increase unemployment by between 20,000 and 30,000 people. Then there is the ripple effect on related industries, which includes the airline industry, the transportation industry, the hotel industry and the restaurant industry.

 

SARS is also having a major impact on trade and other international activities. Many exhibitions, international conferences and cross-strait exchanges have been canceled or postponed. The damage that will be done to Taiwan's economy, which heavily relies on foreign trade, is hard to estimate. Both international and domestic financial markets, already burdened with war worries, may also become unstable because of SARS.

 

The economic damage may be amplified if the outbreak is not quickly brought under control and if the public's fears persist. Consumption and business investment may fall drastically, bringing down economic growth by one or two percentage points. And even that may be a conservative assessment. The government needs to adopt more aggressive measures to buffer the economy. The affected industries should be given appropriate support and guidance.

 

Comprehensive public health and economic strategies are required to make an all-out effort to prevent the outbreak from becoming a festering sore. On the one hand, the administration should establish a testing, quarantine and medical treatment mechanism to keep the SARS situation firmly in control. On the other hand, it should aggressively strengthen education and psychological guidance of the public so as to avoid unnecessary panic.

 

The SARS outbreak has also provided an opportunity for clear and cool-headed reflection on economic relations between Taiwan and China. After resisting World Health Organization offers to help, China has now finally realized that international cooperation is inevitable in the fight against SARS. China's new Premier Wen Jiabao  said China hoped to cooperate with Taiwan and Hong Kong in the effort to control the epidemic. This is a pragmatic attitude. We hope SARS will become an opportunity for cooperation between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

 

 

Cabinet welcomes moves by China

 

DISEASE PREVENTION: The government said it will work with China to combat SARS, but criticized Beijing's moves to keep Taiwan out of the World Health Organization

 

By Ko Shu-ling

STAFF REPORTER

 

The Executive Yuan welcomed China's proposal yesterday to cooperate with Taiwan to battle severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

 

"To safeguard Taiwanese people's overall health and protect the nation's dignity, we'll do whatever is conducive to preventing the spread of SARS, including medical cooperation with China," said Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung. "However, we hope cooperation is conducted under the framework of the World Health Organization [WHO]."

 

Lin also said that China should not consider Taiwan its subordinate.

 

"It's unacceptable that China accords Taiwan and Hong Kong the same administrative status. It's also inappropriate that China continues to hinder Taiwan from entering the WHO," he said.

 

Lin made the remarks in response to a statement by Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday. Hu requested that China's health administration provide necessary assistance to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan to battle the spread of SARS. Hu also asked that China's health administration join medical experts in Hong Kong and Taiwan to find an effective treatment for the disease and study prevention measures.

 

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also expressed the Chinese government's interest in cooperating with Hong Kong and Taiwan to control the outbreak.

 

Addressing a press conference held after the closed-door SARS response meeting yesterday afternoon, Lin called on Beijing to respond to the government's request to provide information on the outbreak in China.

 

The Straits Exchange Foundation made the request at the end of March to its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.

 

"I'm calling on the Chinese government to be transparent in sharing information on SARS," Lin said. "I also hope it would welcome a visit from our medical experts to its affected areas to better understand the situation."

 

Lin said that the premier backed plans to offer financial assistance to the local tourism industry, which has been hard hit by the outbreak.

 

According to Su Cheng-tien, director-general of the tourism bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the bureau will provide subsidies on interest to travel agencies that borrow from banks to cope with SARS' impact.

 

The ceiling of the loan will be set at NT$1 million and the period of the subsidies will be one year. The subsidy for the first six months is 3 percent of the interest rate and 1.5 percent for the remaining six months.

The bureau will also return 90 percent of the security deposit of those travel agencies less than two years old. The travel agencies, however, have to return the money within six months. They will eventually get back 90 percent of the deposit two years after their establishment.

 

To offset losses from the drop-off of China-bound travel, Su said the bureau will encourage the nation's 240,000 civil servants to take domestic trips. Su said the arrangement is expected to create NT$1 billion in business opportunities for the tourism industry.

 

The bureau, however, will not exempt the tourism industry's business and income taxes because it would require amending existing laws.

 

Representatives from the tourism industry proposed on Sunday that the government allocate money from the Employment Stability Fund to those who have lost their jobs or suffered financial losses due to the SARS outbreak. They also requested the government exempt their income and business taxes for a year to keep their businesses afloat.

 

 

Chen firm on justice nominations

 

TRADITION: The president said he'll take responsibility for the nomination process for the Council of Grand Justices, but added he would not subvert the vice president's role

 

By Lin Mei-chun

STAFF REPORTER

 

President Chen Shui-bian yesterday promised that he would assume all responsibilities for the nomination process and its results for the members of the Council of Grand Justices, even though he won't serve as the convener of the nomination task force.

 

The 15 grand justices, including the president and vice president of the Judicial Yuan, are nominated by the head of state with the consent of the legislature.

Their eight-year term will expire on Oct. 1. Under established practice, the vice president acts as the convener of the nomination task force.

 

Although he will not be the convener, Chen assured the public that the nominations won't be affected by politics.

 

The president said that members of the Judicial Yuan should be equipped with high moral standards, knowledge, and professionalism. He also said that they should insist on upholding human rights and caring for the under-privileged. He

also said that the ethnic background of the members is irrelevant.

President Chen Shui-bian, second left, poses with members of a non-governmental organization that supervises the nomination process for the Council of Grand Justices yesterday.

 

 

As for the president and vice president of the Judicial Yuan, Chen said the candidates should have a firm standing on judicial reform and believe in judicial neutrality.

 

Chen also said that more women will be nominated in the upcoming process in an effort to honor his promises for gender equality in the political sphere.

 

Chen made the promises while receiving representatives of the alliance formed to supervise the nomination of the grand justices.

 

The alliance is made up by these six groups: the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Taipei Bar Association, the Judicial Reform Foundation, Taipei Society, the Taiwan Law Society and the Taiwan Bar Association.

 

Chen declined to follow a recommendation made by alliance members, who suggested that the president act as a convener to demonstrate his concern on judicial reform.

 

The president said he won't subvert the tradition by serving as the convener, but stressed that he will take responsibility for the results of the nomination process.

 

Chen also said he believed that human rights will be upheld and democracy will be safeguarded though the nomination process.

 

Chen promised to announce the nominations in May to allow this legislative session ample time for the review process.

 

 

Prosecutors indict 40 in Kaohsiung

 

VOTE-BUYING SCANDAL: A spokesman for the city's prosecutors' office said he hopes the indictments will put a stop to the bribery that has been damaging the nation's democracy

 

By Chiu Yu-Tzu

STAFF REPORTER

 

"This could be the most wonderful battle in Taiwan's judicial history."－Su Ying-kwei, a TSU legislator

 

Forty people, including 34 councilors and a legislator, were indicted yesterday on charges related to the bribery scandal in the December election of the Kaohsiung City Council speaker and vice speaker.

 

"We hope this is the last such prosecution in Taiwan's history. The culture of vote-buying has been devastating to ... Taiwan's democracy," Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office spokesman Chou Chang-chin said in a press conference yesterday.

 

Prosecutors are seeking prison terms for the 34 councilors, including Council Speaker Chu An-hsiung and his deputy Tsai Sung-hsiung, of between six and 30 months. Prosecutors want Chu sentenced to 30 months and Tsai to 28 months.

 

Both Chu and Tsai declined to comment on the indictments.

 

On Dec. 26, Chu was elected speaker after gaining 25 of 44 votes.

 

According to the indictment released by the prosecutors' office yesterday, independent councilor Tsai Ching-yuan had prepared to run for the speakership by paying five councilors NT$5 million each for their votes through PFP Councilor Lee Jung-chung.

 

On Dec. 24 last year, after determining that he was destined to fail in the race, Tsai met with Chu and persuaded Chu to cover his expenses in exchange for backing Chu's bid, the indictment said.

 

Meanwhile, independent Tsai Sung-hsiung agreed to give up his bid for the speakership and sold five votes, for which he had paid NT$5 million each, to Chu.

 

Of the 34 councilors, 10 are DPP members, 10 belong to the KMT, six to the PFP, and eight are independents.

 

The other defendants include DPP Legislator Lin Chin-hsing, former Kaohsiung Civil Affairs Bureau director Wang Wen-cheng and the director of Chu's campaign office, Hsien Chi-yu.

 

Some of the councilors, however, insisted yesterday the judges would find them innocent.

 

Lee yesterday denied his involvement, saying he had never met with Chu prior to the election.

 

TSU Legislator Su Ying-kwei, who is from Kaohsiung and has been following the scandal, said that the prosecution was a result of four months of work by more than 200 prosecutors and investigators.

 

"This could be the most wonderful battle in Taiwan's judicial history," Su said.

 

Some of those involved, including a legislator and four city councilors, were not prosecuted due to insufficient evidence, according to Su.

 

TSU Secretary-General Lin Jih-jia said yesterday the Ministry of the Interior should consider Kaohsiung residents' call for an immediate halt to the council's assembly, which began sitting on April 1.

 

Lin also urged the government to replace the councilors involved in the scandal as soon as possible.

 

The Kaohsiung City Election Commission said yesterday that a by-election will be carried out within three months of convictions being finalized. If, however, councilors are more than two years into their four-year terms by the time their cases are dealt with, a by-election would not be held.

 

 

Time ripe for reform of electoral democracy

 

By Liu Kuan-teh

 

The fundamental paradigm that dominates democracy is the shift from representational to direct democracy. Ideally, voters want to run the show directly and are impatient with intermediaries between their opinions and public policy. This basic shift stems from a profusion of information in tandem with a general distrust for institutions and politicians.

 

In practice, however, such a "procedural democracy" does not represent a true democracy. The problem lies in the electoral system. Take Taiwan for example. The single non-transferable voting system is the key to Taiwan's immature democratic development. Under this system, a legislator can freely filibuster the legislative process or humiliate government officials so long as he or she can secure a sufficient number of votes.

 

Only recently, KMT Legislator Yu Yueh-hsia publicly called Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen a "spinster with psychological problems." Despite tremendous pressure, Yu refused to apologize. Yu's case is the manifestation of Taiwan's ugly and derogatory political culture. Public opinion polls have attributed the nation's political instability to the Legislative Yuan. But the behavior of such loose cannons happens all the time.

 

Some blame the voters who elected these lawmakers, but it is the legislators themselves who cannot exercise self-discipline. The media play a role in encouraging such misconduct. Most media reports have emphasized the antagonism and tension between the ruling and opposition parties. The legislators get more media exposure when they play along with this.

Parties have neither the will nor the guts to initiate electoral reforms. So far, leaders of all parties have agreed to reduce the number of legislators. The PFP even suggested reducing the number from 225 to 100. Regrettably, this is all empty talk. No major actions have been taken. The legislators themselves have become the watchdogs of their vested interests.

 

Under the circumstances, how can we improve the performance of the legislature? Since the public recognizes the Legislative Yuan as a source of political instability, how to manipulate public views will determine the effect of electoral reform.

 

Since President Chen Shui-bian has pledged to speed up the so-called "great reform," the government should explain fully to the public the need for reform. This is a tough choice. But it is also a stark one: to further consolidate democracy or let democracy backtrack.

 

Here are some concrete steps: First, to help the public to monitor the legislature, a legitimate and fair civil association -- composed of experts, academics, media and opinion leaders -- must be formed to monitor legislators' performance.

 

Second, the media should refrain from reporting major news events staged by legislators trying to excuse themselves from wrongdoing. The local press should weigh its own commercial interests and its responsibility to educate the public about right and wrong.

 

Third, a constitutional change is needed to reform the electoral system. In this regard, Chen should accelerate the pace of electoral reforms.

 

Finally, as the electorate has become more opinionated and self-confident and its distrust of politicians, parties and other institutions has become more profound. This underlying shift away from blind faith and toward self-reliance, will lead to fresh demands for referendums. Referendums are a way to move beyond the legislature and have the legislature execute the policy decisions of voters. Reform-minded leaders with a broad vision should take the lead, even though the reforms may not be in their own or their party's best interest.

 

Liu Kuan-teh is a political commentator based in Taipei.

 

Ghost at the war table has son’s ear

 

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, WASHINGTON

 

On the opening night of the first Gulf War on Jan. 16, 1991, US President George Bush unloaded his anxieties into a tape-recorded diary.

 

“I have never felt a day like this in my life,” he said. “I am very tired. I didn’t sleep well, and this troubles me because I must go to the nation at 9 o’clock. My lower gut hurts, nothing like when I had the bleeding ulcer. But I am aware of it, and I take a couple of Mylantas. I think of what other presidents went through.  The agony of war.”

 

A dozen years later, the first President Bush is closely watching the second Gulf War, not from his son’s White House but from “the bench,” as he likes to say. Last Friday evening, the bench was his Houston home, where Bush was the host of a fund-raiser around the time that US troops began encircling Baghdad.

 

“He was in very good spirits,” said C. Boyden Gray, who was Bush’s White House counsel. “I got there a little early, and he was chatting and flipping through the channels on the TV.”

 

The 41^st president rarely speaks publicly about what he thinks of his son’s war, but that has not stopped people from talking about his influence. As the conflict has unfolded, the father has become the ghost at his son’s White House war council, the phantom anti-hawk who never liked US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but worships Secretary of State Colin Powell.

 

In Certain circles in Washington, the first President Bush is even seen as the third member, with Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, of what Strobe Talbott of the Brookings Institution calls the “axis of virtue.”

 

Conversations last week with a dozen of the senior Bush’s friends and close advisers turned up nothing to dispel the view of him as an internationalist, worried about the influence of the go-in-aling hawks in his son’s administration. He is most concerned, they said, about the need to jump-start the Middle East peace process after the conflict and about how the US and the UN will sort out their conflicting roles in administering a postwar Iraq.

 

His views, they said, are exactly those of his closest confidant, James Baker, who said last week that he would not comment for any article about what the first President Bush thinks of the second Gulf War.

 

But Baker, who was secretary of state during the 1991 conflict, made it clear in an ABC interview last month that he thought postwar Iraq should not be a battleground for a replay of the prewar fight between the US, which now wants the central role in Iraq for itself, and allies like France and Germany, who want the central role for the UN.

 

“It’s really important that the role not be such that the postwar administration of Iraq gets all wrapped around the axle, politically, the way it happened in the lead-up to the war in the Security Council,” Baker said. “We’ve got to make sure that there’s not an over-politicization of the question of the new government.”

 

The 41^st and 43^rd presidents talk to each other at least several times a week, but advisers to each man insist that the father never directly tells the son what to do.

 

But that does not mean, the friends say, that the father does not have strong opinions.

 

“I think he’s genuinely conflicted,” said one former aide to the 41^st president. “The son’s relationship to the father is one where he’s still trying to prove his independence. And the father must intuitively know that, and if the father was to press a point strongly, he can intuit that it might well backfire. I can’t imagine there has even been a conversation where the father said, ‘Hey, you’re totally blowing it with the French.”

 

So far, Bush’s only public comments about the war have been totally in support of his son, even when he is asked why this White House failed to build the kind of international coalition that he did in support of the first Gulf War. The situation was different then, Bush says, because the objective of driving the Iraqis from Kuwait was much clearer.

 

“I know we have differences with European countries, and they’ve got differences with us, some of them,” Bush said in a speech in February at Tufts University.

 

But, he said, “I worked on those relationships, and I feel confident that when all this calms down, when Iraq lives within the international law, you will see the United States back tighter as allies and friends with both Germany and France.”

 

He hated it, Bush added, when people criticized his son.

 

“It hurts a lot more when they’re criticizing, especially when some of the criticism is just meaningless in terms of having any intellectual base to it,” Bush said. “I know there’s a false stereotype out there that our president wants to go it alone, rush into war. That is totally false.” In conclusion, Bush said, his son hated war, just as he did.

 

After all, in his tape-recorded White House diary of a dozen years ago, at the conclusion of the first Gulf War, Bush said he had “no feeling of euphoria” when the fighting was over. America may have won, but Saddam Hussein was still in power.

 

“He’s got to go,” said the 41^st president, now the ghost at his son’s war council.

 

 

Hundreds killed in Congo massacre

 

MASS GRAVES: The UN is investigating eyewitness reports that villagers were slaughtered by attackers in an orgy of killing that lasted for three hours

 

The US said on Sunday it had been told nearly 1000 civilians were massacred by tribal militias with machetes and guns in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo last week and buried in mass graves.

“The [UN] investigating team heard that 966 people were, massacred. They identified 20 mass graves and visited 49 seriously injured people in hospitals,” Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the UN mission in Congo (MONUC), said.

 

Witnesses said the massacre occurred on Thursday when attackers raided the town of Drodro and 14 neighboring villages near the Ituri district’s capital Bunia, some 80km from the border with Uganda.

 

The identity of the attackers was nuclear, but ethnic clashes in Ituri have killed thousands of people since 1999. Some local residents suggested that ethnic hatred might have been the trigger for the latest killings.

 

Toure said MONUC investigators had talked to local priests, tribal leaders and eyewitnesses who said the orgy of killing lasted for three hours.

 

The investigators, who visited Drodro on Saturday, saw evidence of clothing and traces of blood above the mass graves, Toure said.

 

The massacre report emerged just days after Cong’s warring factions signed a long-awaited political settlement to end several years of conflict in Africa’s third biggest country.

 

Congo was plunged into civil war in 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda backed an uprising in the east to overthrow the Kinshasa government. At one point, six foreign armies were drawn into the war for Congo’s mineral wealth, and two million people are believed to have died, mainly from hunger and disease.

This Hema-tribe family in Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo, was forced to leave their home after their village was attacked by Lendu-tribe people last September. On Sunday, nearly 1000 members of the Hemma community were reported killed in attacks by the Lendu tribe in the country’s troubled northeastern Lturi region.

 

Ugandan army spokesman Shaban Bantariza said he was ware that “hundreds had been killed” in Drodro but that he was waiting for further information from army investigators.

 

Ugandan troops have remained in Ituri district at the request of the UN, which feared a power and security vacuum in the area.

 

Human rights groups ay up to 500000 people have fled their homes and 50000 more have been killed in the past four years, as rival rebel factions, ethnic militias and the Ugandan army have fought for control of the gold-rich Ituri district.

 

Peace talks are planned for northeastern Congo, organized by the Ituri Pacification Commission (IPC) which is supported by the Congolese and Ugandan governments and MONUC.

 

Hema and Lendu tribal militias signed a ceasefire agreement in March to allow the IPC to begin its work and eventually lead to the withdrawl of Ugandan troops from eastern Congo.

 

Residents of Drodro, a mainly Hema town, said Thursday’s attackers spoke a Lendu language.

 

Fresh fighting was reported on Sunday between Rwanda-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD-Goma) rebels and a tribal militia group in the eastern Congolese town of Bukavu.

 

RCD-Goma senior official Joseph Mudumbi told reporters the Mai Mai tribal militia group as loyal to a former governor of Bukavu. The town is controlled by RCD-Goma.

 

A local journalist in Bukavu said later that calm had returned to the town but that the Mai Mai group was still on the outskirts.

 

In the peace settlement signed last Wednesday, Congo’s government, rebel groups and opposition parties agreed to a transitional government to rule the former Belgian colony for up to two-and-a-half years until its first democratic elections in four decades.

 

 

North Korea conjures up specter of war

 

GUESSING GAME: Analysts are divided over Pyongyang’s strategy as the nation’s propaganda machine continues to churn out dire warnings

 

REUTERS, SEOUL

 

“I don’t think North Korea has changed its stance. They appear to have become more anxious about their future once the Iraq war end.”－Yu Suk-ryul, researcher at Seoul’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security

 

North Korea kept the world guessing yesterday about its nuclear ambitions, a day after saying that even a non-aggression pact with Washington might not avert war on the divided peninsula.

 

The impoverished communist state, which cancelled ministerial talks with South Korea that had been scheduled for yesterday n Pyongyang, said the US-led war against Iraq had proved it could deter a US attack only by mustering massive force.

 

“Only the physical deterrent force, tremendous military deterrent force powerful enough to decisively beat back an attack supported by ultra-modern weapons, can avert a war and protect the security of the country and the nation,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried on Sunday by the official KCNA news agency.

 

“This is a lesson drawn from the Iraqui war,” it said.

 

North Korean television took a different line.  It reiterated that face-to-face talks were the best way to break the nuclear impasse and criticized the administration of US President George W. Bush for rejecting them, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

 

Sifting through the evidence, some North Korea analysts said Pyongyang, rather than setting its face against a non-aggression pact, was ratcheting up its demands for direct talks out of concern it could become Washington’s next target after Iraq.

 

The US has bracketed North Korea with Iraq and Iran in an “axis of evil” of states seeking to produce and spread weapons of mass destruction.

“I don’t think North Korea has changed its stance. They appear to have become more anxious about their future once the Iraq war ends,” said Yu Suk-ryul, a researcher at  the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul.

 

Yu said North Korea was strengthening its defensive posture because it was worried about a possible pre-emptive US strike against its nuclear complex.

 

“They have apparently become more nervous as Washington is not talking to them, h e said.

 

North Korea kept up its martial rhetoric yesterday.

 

“We need candy, but having tanks and artillery is more important to protect and develop the destiny of our people,” Yonhap quoted Rodong Sinmun, the North’s communist party daily, as saying.

 

Tension has mounted since Washington said in October that North Korea had admitted to pursuing a covert program to enrich uranium for weapons. The North has denied making such an acknowledgement but it has since expelled UN nuclear inspectors and pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

 

The UN, after weeks of American prodding, is to discuss the crisis tomorrow, despite Pyongyang’s objections.

 

Diplomatic signals yesterday suggested that the US could be making some headway in insisting other governments be included in any nuclear talks with North Krea.

 

Yonhap said senior North Korean officials were visiting Beijing to discuss the idea of multilateral talks.

 

On Sunday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi told Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in Beijing that a multilateral dialogue as important, according to a Japanese official.

 

China has so far said it favors direct US-North Korean talks, but has not ruled out multilateral talks at some point.

 

The North’s brinkmanship has put new South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in  tight spot.

 

Before taking office on February 25, Roh made comments that suggested he would take a softer line toward North Korea and was seeking a more equitable partnership with Washington. That, along with anti-US protests in Seoul, upset the Bush administration.

 

But Roh has since sought to strengthen ties with Washington, describing North Korea’s suspected nuclear program as a “grave threat to world peace” and deciding to send 700 non-combat troops to Iraq in a show of support for the US.

 

That move angered North Korea, which scrapped ministerial talks due to have begun yesterday in Pyongyang. South Korea’s unification minister said he regretted the decision and asked for the meeting to be rescheduled as swiftly as possible.

A propaganda poster appealing to the North Korea military to crush the US is now on display at a cultural center in the capital of Pyongyang. This is one in a series of military posters making the 10th anniversary of Kim’s inauguration as supreme commander of North Korea’s armed forces tomorrow. The slogan reads,” Crush the citadel of the wolf-like American empire.”