The Run Up to the 4th Congress of RCPB(ML)

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The Run Up to the 4th Congress of RCPB(ML)

Foreign Office Minister Acts with Sang-Froid while Backing US Line

Korean Central News Agency on the Stand of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

With this issue of Workers’ Daily Internet Edition we are pleased to announce that we are resuming publication in the run up to the 4th Congress of RCPB(ML). WDIE has not appeared from February 20 to March 4 inclusive. This period has been devoted to essential preparatory work for the Congress in this critical time for peace-loving humanity and for the working class and its leading role in finding a way out of the crisis. The Party’s 4th Congress is scheduled for March 29-30, 2003.

To apply for delegate status to the Congress, please go through the local basic organisation of RCPB(ML). To apply for observer status, either contact the National Office of RCPB(ML) or speak with your Party contact. If you have an intervention you wish to make at the 4th Congress, please submit it to the National Office of the Party.

Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell visited south Korea and Japan from February 24-27. He was in Seoul for the inauguration of the new President of the Republic of Korea (ROK), Roh Moo-hyun.

Before leaving, Bill Rammell said: ‘The UK is determined to work with all its international partners towards a peaceful solution on the DPRK nuclear issue. It is right and proper that the UN Security Council should discuss this issue. North Korea must comply with its international obligations. Its recent behaviour only serves to increase its isolation from the international community."

In the mouths of the Foreign Office, the "international community" increasingly is taken to mean the US, Britain and their allies. It is only in this sense that Bill Rammell can speak of the isolation of the DPRK from the "international community". The government speaks in this way as though the whole world were united behind its position, when in fact international contradictions are intensifying rapidly. These words are taken to mean that any state not in step with the Anglo-American line is out of step and a "pariah".

However, on the question of the "DPRK nuclear issue", it is the US which is provocatively pushing for its so-called "internationalising", and Britain is dutifully also toeing that line. Bill Rammell was in North East Asia at the same time as US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was emphasising that the issue is "not just a US-DPRK matter".

It must be remembered that the DPRK is being made the target by the US for the possible first-strike use of nuclear weapons, while massing troops in south Korea and escalating its provocations. Meanwhile, according to the US and British logic, it is the DPRK, which has never used nuclear weapons nor has troops outside its borders, which is the "nuclear threat".

It should further be recalled that it is the DPRK which has proposed a non-aggression pact to the US as a means to resolve this problem, a proposal which the US administration has not given the time of day.

Furthermore, the US and Britain are the ones who are being increasingly isolated. This is very stark in the case of the aggression against Iraq. But it is also true in the case of Korea, as the "internationalising" of the issue has been rejected both by the ROK, as well as the People’s Republic of China. Even the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, in Seoul for the presidential inauguration, was quoted as saying, "Whether one likes it or not … this will have to be resolved bilaterally."

While adopting a posture of sang-froid towards the DPRK, Bill Rammell, in the manner of a British colonialist, also took up the US line and passed insulting remarks. "I think there's a pattern with North Korea of fairly hamfisted gestures and I think this in keeping with that kind of profile," he said of a reported missile test.

Echoing Colin Power, the Foreign Office minister said that the aim was to seek a diplomatic solution and a "firm but low-key" statement from the UN Security Council on the north Korea's nuclear programme. He said it was up to north Korea to take the first step and to engage in multilateral talks that could then help ease its security concerns.

The Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell said that Britain, in its role as a guarantor of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, strongly backed the US refusal to strike a bilateral deal with north Korea.

Although Bill Rammell maintains a studied indifference, Britain has also turned its military attentions to the DPRK. At the end of December last year, it was reported that British special forces from the SAS had been drafted in to monitor the DPRK’s "nuclear build-up". While the government refused to comment further, the report (as quoted in the London Evening Standard) said that "SAS soldiers have been switched from the build-up to war against Iraq to check the restarting of operations at North Korea's Yongbyong experimental nuclear complex".

The minister in the same high-handed vein added: "North Korea is out of touch and out of line if it thinks the international community will bow to this sort of dangerous behaviour. The international community must show a stiff backbone on this. The solution to this is simple. North Korea must get back into line and get back into touch with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Once it does, all manner of things are possible. That is the first move."

It is this "spokesman" of the "international community" who is actually out of touch. For example, Roh Moo-hyun said in a speech to the Federation of Korean Trade Unions that he had won his presidential campaign chiefly on the basis of promises not to kowtow to the US and to strengthen relations with the north. In his final speech, outgoing President Kim Dae-jung said on February 24 that "more than anything, dialogue between north Korea and the United States is the important key to the solution".

Thus it is the attempts of Britain and the US in trying to rally the ROK and the PRC to take their hard line with the DPRK that are out of tune with the sentiment not only of the Korean people on both sides of the divided peninsula but with the wishes of the people internationally also. It is US which represents the threat of war as it does in the Middle East and globally. The Korean people are demanding that this threat be ended and they be allowed to reunify their country peacefully. Not only the US but Britain also should remove its troops from foreign soil. Britain should end all its aggression and intervention which is being carried out under the signboard of the government being the moral conscience of the world. It is this stance which makes British intervention for its own interests and those of the US even more criminal.

US urged not to misinterpret DPRK's stand

Pyongyang – The United States is painting the DPRK's self-defensive countermeasure to cope with its escalating military threat and pressure on the DPRK as "brinkmanship tactics" in a bid to build up public opinion. This only betrays the political imbeciles' ignorance of the reality. Rodong Sinmun [newspaper of the Workers’ Party of Korea] says this in a signed commentary on February 28.

The commentary goes on:

The DPRK Government withdrew from the NPT to defend the supreme interests and sovereignty of the country under the present situation. This was solely for the purpose of self-defence.

Its toughest measure is neither threat nor blackmail against anyone.

However, the US is floating misinformation that the DPRK's just measure is aimed at wresting a sort of "concession" and getting "economic benefits". The US even went to the lengths of making ridiculous remarks that the DPRK will not get any "aid" unless it meets the US demand.

Base and ridiculous is the US trick to defile the DPRK's just toughest measure with unreasonable and distorted assertion and accusations.

No matter what misinformation the US floats to slander the DPRK it will not withdraw its principled stance. The further the US escalates its military threat and pressure on the DPRK, the tougher countermeasures it will take to cope with them.

The US should stop misinterpreting the DPRK's principled stance and tough measure and honestly opt for solving the issue with a sound faculty of thinking.

Settlement of nuclear issue through DPRK-US talks called for

Pyongyang – A final document adopted at the 13th Non-Aligned Summit dealt with the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry on February 28 answered a question put by KCNA in this connection.

He said:

The final document of the summit reflected the unanimous view of the participants that the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula should be settled through dialogue and negotiations between the parties directly concerned with it.

This is a strong rebuff to the US which is insisting on "multilateral talks" in a bid to internationalise the nuclear issue, while turning down the DPRK's consistent call for its negotiated settlement between the parties directly concerned with it.

The DPRK and the US are the parties directly concerned with the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula.

As the non-aligned movement clarified its stand on this issue, it is the most reasonable way of settling the issue for the DPRK and the US to sit face to face and negotiate it.

Such stand clarified at the summit of non-aligned nations, which make up the majority of the countries of the world, fairly represents the stand of the international community toward the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.

The US is well advised to lend an ear to the unanimous voices of the international community demanding a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations between the DPRK and the US and immediately opt for a direct dialogue with the DPRK.