Stockholm backed Washington in the 1950-53 Korean War, including with a field hospital. Since the war the Swedish government has participated in the United Nations body that oversees military contacts across the 38th parallel, which marks the U.S.-imposed division of the country.

Stockholm has maintained diplomatic relations with the governments in both the north and the south of Korea, putting it in an especially suitable position within the EU imperialist alliance to intervene in politics in the Korean peninsula. The visit is the main political initiative that the Swedish government has to date been able to carry out while holding the rotating presidency position.

The Swedish government's main priority has been promoting the enlargement of the European Union into eastern and central Europe, especially the Baltic states. But this process is foundering as divisions mount among the main powers in the European Union.

The visit took place as talks on reunification between the north and the south had stalled, largely because Washington ended its involvement in October. The process opened last June when south Korean president Kim Dae Jung visited the north and signed agreements to organize cabinet-level exchanges and visits by family members kept apart by the division of the country.

These initial steps have been highly popular among working people in Korea. The mood among workers was captured in a statement by an anonymous speaker at the first May Day demonstration in north Korea in which workers from both the north and south participated. "We workers in Korea," he said, "must together fight the armed threat from foreign forces and safeguard peace on the Korean peninsula."

Washington is worried that further developments along these lines could erode the justification for its massive military presence in south Korea and undercut its political influence on the peninsula. The talks also make it more difficult for Washington to demonize north Korea as a "rogue state" with the potential to launch missiles at the United States, an argument used as one of its justifications for deploying an antimissile system.

When President Kim Dae Jung visited Washington to win support from President George Bush for his "Sunshine policy" toward the north, Bush expressed "skepticism" over the process and did not say when Washington would return to negotiations.

The Washington Post, in an article entitled, "EU Mission to Koreas Is Seen as a Rebuke to Bush," wrote that the "surprise foray into a traditional U.S. sphere of influence struck many observers as an unspoken rebuke to the Bush administration for having retreated from those talks, to the consternation of its South Korea allies." The Post diplomatically left out of the article that the freeze on U.S. participation in the talks began months earlier under the Clinton administration.

As the EU team was flying to Pyongyang, President Kim Dae Jung, according to officials in Seoul quoted by the International Herald Tribune, was on the phone with President Bush urging him to resume the U.S.-north Korean talks "at the earliest possible date after the ongoing review of US-policy toward North Korea is completed."

Swedish prime minister Göran Persson in a statement stressed that the European Union was not trying to take the place of the United States in fostering a reconciliation between the two Koreas but that the European Union delegation hoped to revive the faltering reconciliation process. In another statement posted on its web site the Swedish government said the EU "wants to help make this process irreversible and this will be explained both in Pyongyang and in Seoul."

During five hours of talks May 3, north Korean leader Kim Jong Il told the EU delegation that he will extend the country's moratorium on the test firing of missiles until 2003, with further extensions possible if negotiations with Washington and south Korea resume. He also indicated he would await the outcome of a U.S. government policy review on north Korea before deciding on a reciprocal visit to the south. Swedish prime minister Persson said Kim Jong Il gave the delegation the "firm impression" that "the north wants a new summit." Persson also told the media that so far "we have seen too little of action to be sure about the character of the partner we have in north Korea."

While visiting Seoul May 10, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told President Kim Dae Jung that Washington would resume talks with the north Korean government "in the near future" and that Bush expressed his "strong support" for Kim's "engagement with the North." Armitage told Kim Dae Jung of Washington's view that the missile shield and the talks "could be pursued in tandem."

Four days later the EU announced that formal diplomatic relations with Pyongyang would be opened.

In an official statement, the body said that it hoped the move would "facilitate the European Community's efforts in support of reconciliation in the Korean Peninsula and, in particular, in support of economic reform and easing of the acute food and health problems in the north."

Carl-Erik Isacsson is a member of the Metal Workers union in Södertälje, Sweden.  
 
 
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