US official hints at reduced Pacific deployment as carrot to N Korea

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-04-05

Daniel Russel. (Photo/CNS)

Daniel Russel, US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, has urged China to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for an implied reduction of US military deployment in the Asia-Pacific region, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.

Russel said during a conference held by the Asia Society this week that the best way for China to influence the military deployment of the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific is persuading Pyongyang to take the right path.

He recognized China's supports for the United Nations Security Council's sanctions on North Korea but also said Beijing's approach of coaxing the Kim Jong-un government has been fruitless.

Beijing's strategies toward North Korea have walked a tightrope between maintaining stability in the region bordering China and preventing Pyongyang from owning nuclear weapon, Russel said. China's government has opposed the approach of the US, Japan and South Korea to rein in North Korea but its own wheedling tactics have been unsuccessful, he said

South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo noted that it is rare for a US official to openly raise US military deployment in the Asia-Pacific region as leverage. The is an enticement as well as a threat to China, suggesting that the US could increase its military deployment in order to protect Japan and South Korea. Although China and the US have taken the same stance on the issue of a nuclear Korean peninsula, they differ greatly on how to handle the situation.

Russel has openly proposed the exchange, which is unusual since most nations trade their interests under the table, said Jin Canrong, a professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing. Jin also said Russel's remark was indirectly aimed at undermining relations between China and North Korea.