BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
Representatives of the government of the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) began a meeting with U.S.
government officials September 7 in Berlin. Washington has
declared that its goal in the negotiations is to persuade
Pyongyang to cancel alleged plans to test a long-range missile
it has supposedly built.
The big-business media have published repeated articles and editorials for the last two months spreading unsubstantiated statements, originating largely from U.S. intelligence, of "threatening behavior" from the DPRK.
"The United States says the Berlin talks are intended to emphasize the advantages to North Korea of toning down its threatening behavior, and in particular of shelving its plan to test its newest long-range rocket, the Taepodong 2," said an article in the September 7 New York Times. "The rocket may have a range of up to 6,000 miles, enabling it to hit Hawaii and parts of Alaska."
A year ago, Tokyo and Washington accused the DPRK of test- firing a shorter range missile over Japan. The DPRK government has maintained the rocket launched a satellite.
In August, Washington dispatched two additional military reconnaissance ships near the DPRK, supposedly to monitor the imminent launch of the new rocket. The White House has also used these allegations to justify its previous decision to deploy the Theater Missile Defense system in southeast Asia, signing an agreement with Tokyo August 16 to do this as a joint project.
This system would give U.S. imperialism a first-strike nuclear capacity for the first time, augmenting its already large military deployments in that part of the world aimed against the workers states in China and Korea.
Washington - which carried out the bloody 1950-53 war against the Korean people and has kept the country divided ever since - maintains 40,000 troops in south Korea, armed with nuclear weapons, and 50,000 in Japan. It has recently threatened the government of Kazakhstan with sanctions if it went ahead with sales of MIG jet fighters to the DPRK, and has promised Seoul it will lift limits in order to allow the south Korean regime to obtain missiles that can reach northern Korea.
Some politicians in Washington are attempting to whip up anticommunism and war hype around this issue. U.S. Senator Mitchell McConnell, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, recently sent a fund-raising letter to the public stating, "Dear Fellow American: My colleagues in the United States Senate must have your immediate help to protect our country from a potentially devastating nuclear attack."
Titled "Nuclear Crisis Action Survey," the letter solicited contributions ranging from $25 to $1,000 while asking questions such as: "We want your opinions on how you want the Senate to act on the shocking information that has only recently come to our attention: The Communist North Korean government has obtained nuclear technology and possibly the capability of reaching our shores with nuclear missiles....
"By the time we retaliate with our own missiles, their nuclear bombs will have already killed hundreds of thousands of our citizens. And the reason is the Clinton-Gore administration for years refused to allow deployment of the military's missile defense program."
Initially peddled as an idea during the administration of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, this "Star Wars" missile system is now under implementation by the Clinton administration.
This has gone hand-in-hand with stepped up moves by the White House against the rights of working people in the United States - the establishment of a North American military command aimed at "domestic" supporters of "rogue" nations, soaring incarceration rates, use of federal police agencies against workers on strike, and the attempts to whip up hysteria over supposed Chinese spies. The DPRK is on Washington's list of such "rogue" nations that supposedly promote terrorism.
Washington and Tokyo are threatening to cut off the small amounts of food aid they sent to Pyongyang after repeated floods caused severe food shortages in the DPRK between 1995 and 1998. The Japanese government has also stated it will suspend permission to Koreans living in Japan to send remittances to relatives at home, which total between $250 million and $600 million per year, if the alleged rocket testing is carried out.
These threats are equally aimed against Beijing. "The Chinese must know that there is no chance of putting off the theater missile defense if the North Koreans launch," said James Kelly, president of the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.