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发帖数: 21667 | 1 Six-party talks as a way of taming the belligerency of North Korea have fail
ed and should be replaced by tougher military responses and economic embargo
es, said a former chief of the U.S. Forces Korea on Friday.
Burwell Baxter Bell, who was the U.S. commander in Korea between 2006 and 20
08, said South Korea and the U.S. should implement stronger, asymmetric reta
liatory military strikes against North Korean provocation. Even shutting dow
n the Kaesong Industrial Complex should be implemented, he said.
Addressing a forum in Seoul, titled “Korea-U.S. Alliance: Current Status, I
ssues and Future Directions,” Bell judged that the recent provocative behav
iors by the North, including the Nov. 23 deadly shelling of the Yeonpyeong I
sland, have proved the policies implemented over recent years to engage the
North were ineffective.
“Sixteen years of failed diplomacy since the signing of the Agreed Framewor
k has resulted in a nuclear-armed North Korea,” Bell said.
The Agreed Framework, instituted between the U.S. and North Korea in Geneva
in 1994, was for the U.S. to give economic aid to the North in return for it
giving up nuclear programs.
But that framework became unsustainable when the North walked out of the Non
-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and held nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
Last month, it revealed a uranium enrichment facility that could provide the
North an alternative way of producing nuclear weapons.
“For now, we should abandon six-party talks processes. It has failed,” Bel
l said, referring to the multinational negotiations on North Korea’s nuclea
r disarmament that started in 2003 and has been stalled since April 2009 wit
h the North’s walkout. “As long as Kim Jong-il is in power, the six-party
talks process is dead.”
Bell’s words came as China is trying to resume the six-party talks to save
its communist ally.
Bell said recent provocations by the North are to lure the U.S. to sign a pe
ace treaty with it, but that is unacceptable, Bell said, because that would
bring a permanent division of the two Koreas.
Bell said the only options effective toward the North are military responses
and more pressure such as economic embargoes. He said Seoul should strike b
ack at North Korean aggression in a more effective way than it did over the
Yeonpyeong attack.
“Next time the North attacks, there should be asymmetric retaliatory milita
ry strikes by South Korea. Allowing North Korea to attack the South with no
counterstrike consequences sends a message of weakness and timidity to Kim J
ong-il,” he said.
On the U.S. part, Bell said, the annual land exercises should involve increa
sing the number of U.S. combat soldiers participating in them. He said the n
aval drills involving U.S. carriers should be ramped up and conducted more f
requently. |
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