China 'ready to abandon' its old ally North Korea
By David Usborne, US Editor
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 47168.html
PS:As for the comments on the "well held" CWG,is anyone rooting for crooks like Kalmadi and Co. who siphoned off thousands of crores? Shame on you if so! There is no connection between our athletes' fine performances at the CWG and Asian Games and the wholesale looting of the taxpayer's/nation's money by the scamsters.The shameful pics we saw on TV of incomplete infrastructure spoke more than a thousand words and we now have the arrests and raids going on against the chiefs of the OC to justify our earlier condemnation of the same.They reveal, for example, senior Chinese envoys revealing, if not directly to US counterparts then to opposite numbers in Seoul, that they sometimes are as flummoxed and as irritated with Pyongyang as the West, saying on one occasion that it was behaving like "a spoilt child" trying to get everyone's attention.
The US envoy to Seoul also told her superiors in Washington that she was hearing from South Korean officials in Seoul that they fully expect to see the final collapse of the regime to the north and unification within "two to three years" by its current – and by all accounts ailing – leader, Kim Jong-il.
The cables confirm that among China's greatest concerns is that an implosion of North Korea would lead to a mass exodus of the country's citizens across the border into China. However, it is not entirely unprepared for such an event. It considers itself ready to absorb 300,000 refugees even now. Beyond that number, Beijing might move to seal the border with its military.
Some of the new information is contained in an account of a 2009 conversation held by the US envoy ambassador Kathleen Stephens, with Chun Yung-woo, then vice-foreign minister of South Korea. He had relayed to her what he had learnt from two high-level Chinese foreign ministry officials on the fringes of currently stalled six-party talks on halting North Korea's nuclear programme.
Chun said he had been told that the younger members of China's leadership no longer considered a unified Korea to be out of the question but rather considered it a serious possibility in the future. This new attitude had come, they said, with the realisation also that North Korea could no longer be relied upon, even by China.
"The two officials, Chun said, were ready to 'face the new reality' that the DPRK [North Korea] now had little value to China as a buffer state", Ms Stephens says in her cable to Washington. She says the Chinese officials informed Chun that Beijing's Chinese leaders "would be comfortable with a reunited Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a benign alliance".
At the same time, there was an assumption that in the event of reunification, China would not want to see a significant number of US soldiers stationed north of what is now the border between the two countries and therefore closer to its own border area.
Coming just days after a new crisis erupted in the area with shells fired by North Korean forces landing on an island in the territory of the South, killing two citizens and instant evacuations and putting in motion significant new joint military manoeuvres of the US and South Korea, these revelations are certain to draw intense scrutiny. The aggression has been seen by some as the last flailings of a dying monster.
Caution will doubtless be urged about these cables. Nothing here could possibly be described as China's official position. Scholars will recall that when Kim Jong-il's father, North Korea's founder, passed away in 1994, a similar wave of wishful thinking broke out.
Some satisfaction will be drawn from passages in the cables suggesting that while China has always been regarded as the only country with any meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang, even it has admitted often to being in the dark about its intentions, particularly when it comes to nuclear matters.
It was after Pyongyang fired rockets over the Sea of Japan last year claiming they were trying to send satellites into space, that a Chinese official made his allusion to juvenile behaviour.
In a meeting with another senior diplomat in the region, He Yafei, a Chinese chargé d'affaires with the foreign ministry, observed that "North Korea wanted to engage directly with the United States and was therefore acting like a 'spoilt child' in order to get the attention of the 'adult'".
PPS:Guys,as for the NoKo missile sales to Iran,it is destabilising,but why is Iran so paranoid too? It is because the Saudis ,the Bahreinis and the rest of the Gulfis want the US,Israel,etc. to defang Iran,getting someonelse to do the job.When faced with such animosity from their own Muslim brethren,no wonder that the "surrounded" Iranians and NoKos link hands to defend themselves.Read Fisk's hilarious and accurate view of the ME angle to the leaks in the W.Asia thread,a must,link below.The great GUlf kngdoms,sheikdoms and their rulers stand fully exposed.This is not to defend the actions of these paranoid states,it is understanding why they behave so erratically.Secondly,Iran is our strategic buffer to Pak and an objective of this and other GOI's,even if our support for it has weakened thanks to US presurre,we
do not want to abandon our strategic interests vis-a-vis Pak.NoKo's "Ding-Dong" missile sales to Pak,with PRC connivance during Clinton's days,were far more destabilising to India than Iran's,which are aimed at the Saudi's and Iran's M-East enemies rather than India.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 46971.html