Charm, Fear May Help China Lure N. Korea Back to Arms Talks

China is likely to employ a combination of incentives, arguments and mild scare tactics in coming weeks as it tries to persuade North Korea to resume negotiations aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program. But it won’t be easy to succeed, analysts say, given the complexities of dealing with the isolationist state, even for Pyongyang’s neighbor, fellow communist regime and closest ally.

Probably the greatest incentive China can offer North Korea is an enhanced aid package, possibly with South Korea’s help, essentially a sweetener to convince the Stalinist state to rejoin six-nation talks that also involve the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Beijing has pledged as host of the talks to try to bring Pyongyang back to the table.

In the past, North Korea has tended to look for immediate, up-front benefits for any concession, no matter how small. China, which already provides tens of millions of dollars in food and energy aid to North Korea each year, has resisted funneling its largess through multilateral agencies such as the United Nations, where its leverage would be diluted.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday that “the North Koreans shouldn’t be rewarded for causing difficulties in the reconvening of talks.”

China will also attempt to play on Pyongyang’s fears and its vanity, analysts said. The North Korean regime is, above all, concerned with staying in power, and Chinese diplomats will suggest that this objective is best served by negotiating, not by issuing bellicose threats that could make a confrontation with the U.S. into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Beijing may also try to build trust by citing the communist ideology that both countries share. And it could massage North Korea’s ego by arguing that Pyongyang is an extremely important power in the region whose opinions are taken seriously.

The Bush administration has on more than one occasion given verbal assurances that it is not keen to mount a military attack against North Korea. China may refer to this pledge in its bid to reassure the regime of North Korea leader Kim Jong Il. That said, it doesn’t want to align itself too closely with any U.S. argument lest it undermine its broker role, nor does it know for certain what the Bush administration will ultimately do.

Chinese negotiators may also hint at cooler Beijing-Pyongyang relations should North Korea decide to walk away from the talks altogether. The two allies have drifted apart in the last two decades as China became more integrated with the outside world and North Korea kept the world at bay. Even so, the prospect of losing one’s last significant friend is daunting, even for a hermit nation like North Korea.

Finally, China may ask the U.S. and North Korea to make small face-saving concessions to get things back on track, despite U.S. assertions that it will never make economic concessions. This might include an increase in food aid by the U.N. or other international groups to North Korea, or some format that allows for bilateral U.S.-North Korea meetings under the umbrella of the six-nation format.

North Korea formally announced Thursday that it had nuclear weapons and that it intended to walk away from the talks, prompting statements of concern from capitals around the world. Analysts say Pyongyang chose the moment well to create maximum surprise, turn the spotlight back on itself and ultimately raise the settlement price it might hope to exact for giving up its weapons program.

China was all but shut down last week for Chinese New Year, the biggest holiday of the year, with many of its senior negotiators visiting their ancestral hometowns. The Bush administration was distracted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s European tour and ongoing Middle East issues. And the announcement fell into something of a global news vacuum, between Iraq’s national election day and the announcement of the voting results.

Whether North Korea has nuclear weapons, how many it might possess and how powerful they might be remain issues of intense speculation. South Korea’s point man on North Korea, Chung Dong Young, said Monday in Seoul that it was premature to call North Korea a nuclear power despite its claims, since it had yet to conduct a nuclear test.

In Beijing, Zhang Liangui, a Korea expert with the Central Party School, said the North Korean regime wants to remain in place, and “they believe the most powerful way to make that happen is to possess nuclear weapons.”

In Washington, South Korea’s foreign minister predicted after a meeting with Rice that the North Koreans would agree to resume the talks.

China’s desire to restart a dialogue and see it succeed goes beyond the immediate goal of curbing North Korea’s nuclear program.

Although China has a big interest in a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, the talks also represent the best avenue for Beijing to show its value in Washington, gain a reputation as a responsible player and build confidence.

“If North Korea talks fail, U.S.-Sino cooperation will face more problems,” said Guo Shuyong, an international relations expert at Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. “It’s a way to build mutual trust.”

In its bid to become a major global player, China needs the cooperation of the U.S., which can help or hinder its development in areas as diverse as trade, diplomacy, military modernization and relations with Taiwan and Japan.

China also holds out hope that successful talks could segue into a regional security grouping with Beijing at its center, further strengthening its clout.

China also needs North Korea talking again to vindicate its argument that Washington will gain more by gentle persuasion than by threats and ultimatums. Beijing has expended a good deal of political capital trying to persuade Washington to lower the rhetorical volume and would lose face if it turned out to be a flawed approach.

Beijing is also keen to blunt calls in the U.S. for a tough embargo against North Korea because that could result in tens of thousands of impoverished refugees fleeing into China across their 850-mile shared border. And Beijing is intent on the U.S. not using force in its neighborhood, an act that would weaken China’s sphere of influence.

A senior diplomat with one of the six negotiating nations said the U.S. would try to appear patient for the time being, if for no other reason than to show the Chinese and other negotiating partners that it had tried to exhaust every diplomatic option for dealing with North Korea.

He predicted that American patience with North Korea might last six months, Beijing’s up to a year, and South Korea’s five years.

Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.