SEOUL/WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The United States warned China it would redeploy forces in Asia if Beijing failed to rein in North Korea, an Obama administration official said yesterday, as Pyongyang bowed to Seoul’s demands for crisis talks.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s warning had persuaded China — the North’s main diplomatic and economic backer — to take a harder line toward Pyongyang, and opened the door to a resumption of inter-Korean talks, possibly next month, the official said, confirming a report in The New York Times.
North Korea accepted the South’s conditions for talks on Thursday, marking a major breakthrough in the crisis on the peninsula. Such dialogue could clear the way for the resumption of the six-party aid-for-disarmament talks.
Obama warned his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, that if Beijing did not step up pressure on North Korea, Washington would redeploy its forces in Asia to protect itself from a potential North Korean strike on U.S. soil.
The Obama administration official declined to give more specific details about any possible redeployments. China was angered by last year’s large-scale U.S.-South Korean military drills in the Yellow Sea, seen as a major projection of U.S. power off its coasts.
The drills included participation of a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier and were meant to be a show of force that would deter the North from any future provocations.
Obama first made the warning in a telephone call to Hu last month, and repeated it over a private dinner at the White House on Tuesday, the U.S. administration official said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs first hinted at the stepped-up pressure at a news briefing on Thursday, when he told reporters that Obama’s meeting with Hu on Wednesday had helped shift entrenched attitudes on the Korean peninsula.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that Pyongyang was becoming a direct threat to the United States and could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles within five years.
Wang Dong of Peking University’s School of International Studies said Washington’s reported warning to Beijing was a slap in the face for the Chinese leader, who has urged the two Koreas to resolve their differences through dialogue.
“Playing tough like this, it might just backfire, I’m afraid,” Wang said. “If this article represents the real thinking by American leaders, the danger of war on the peninsula can never be dismissed.”
“China has its own strategy in trying to influence North Korea. It wants to find the least costly path to solve this crisis.”
The proposed talks would be the first contact between the two Koreas since a deadly artillery attack on the South in November sharply raised tensions on the divided peninsula.
