Russia given cold shoulder as Chinese snuggle up

Sunny Lee, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: April 29. 2009 11:42PM UAE / April 29. 2009 7:42PM GMT

Protesters in Seoul took to the streets after the North’s April 5 rocket launch. South Korea had hoped for Russia-mediated diplomacy. Lee Jin-man / AP

BEIJING // As the international community seeks to defuse tensions in the wake of North Korea’s recent long-range rocket launch, the tepid reception given to Russia’s foreign minister in Pyongyang last week reveals a strained relationship between the one-time allies, and is a sign of China’s strong influence, analysts said.

“To begin with, Russia does not provide economic assistance to North Korea, which makes Russia fundamentally different from China, on which North Korea depends for economic survival,” said Yoichi Funabashi, a Japanese security expert on East Asia, citing a Russian diplomat in his book, The Peninsula Question.

“At this point, there is no leverage for Russia to exert North Korea into doing something,” said Leonid Petrov, a Russian expert on Korean affairs. “The 2006 nuclear experiment and the rocket or missile launch this year demonstrated that North Korea has no interest in listening to what Moscow [says].”

Russia’s waning influence on Pyongyang has been supplanted by the growing influence of China, which once competed with Russia for leverage in North Korea during the Cold War. Those days are long gone as China has established itself as the country’s most important ally.

That point was starkly illustrated during Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s stopover in Seoul after visiting Pyongyang.

In a press conference there, the Russian diplomat debriefed the South Korean press on the results of his visit to the North, which had originally been undertaken to urge Northern leaders to resume the six-party talks on their nuclear programme.

“North Korea, at the moment, doesn’t have an intention of returning to the talks,” Mr Lavrov reported.

Seoul had also hoped Moscow would play a mediating role on the contentious issue of transporting natural gas from Russia, through North Korea, to the South. Little progress seems to have been made on this point either. “I need to mention that this project is very difficult to realise,” Mr Lavrov said when asked about its status.

Pyongyang also reportedly turned down a Russian proposal to have North Korea use Russian facilities to launch a satellite in the future. Pyongyang maintains that its rocket launch last month was to test its ability to put a satellite in orbit.

To highlight the North’s disinterest in Russian overtures, and to make matters worse, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il failed to meet the Russian envoy, a protocol his father, the late leader Kim Il-sung, had maintained. When asked about this slight, Mr Lavrov said that it was not done because he “didn’t ask for it”.

South Korean media, initially holding out hope that the Russian envoy would bring a “deal proposal” from Pyongyang, did not conceal their disappointment, saying: “Unlike our expectation, he came from Pyongyang empty-handed,” said MBC, a major broadcaster.

Despite his unproductive trip, the Russian envoy surprisingly showed support for the North by exhibiting what analysts termed “undiplomatic” behaviour at a joint press conference in Seoul. After South Korean foreign minister Yu Myung-hwan described the two countries’ support for UN sanctions on the North, Mr Lavrov replied angrily, “I need to state that the sanctions are unconstructive.”

Commenting on Mr Lavrov’s trip, a Chinese analyst, speaking anonymously, said: “We Chinese say we don’t have influence on North Korea. We say North Korea is a sovereign state and it makes its own decisions. But everybody knows that we have the influence.”

Observers say China’s leverage on North Korea will continue to grow as Russia’s atrophies. Some even claim that North Korea’s designation of an heir to succeed Mr Kim, its ailing leader, might also have to accommodate “China’s preference”.

But then, North Korea is a seasoned political player and has always taken advantage of the rivalry between the two giants. If the North feels China’s clout is increasingly overbearing, it then “will reverse its tendency to ignore Russia”, the Chinese analyst said.

The Soviet Union was a major Cold War benefactor to North Korea and was a staunch ally in what Pyongyang calls its “great struggle against the threat of the American imperialism”. Soviet records also show that Kim Jong-il was born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, in Russia in 1941.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the cash-strapped Russian government demanded Pyongyang pay back in hard currency its debts to Moscow, which, Mr Petrov said, “dealt a major blow in the Russo-North Korea relationship”.

Russian interest and influence in North Korea declined steadily in the 1990s, especially after Moscow established diplomatic ties with South Korea, which Pyongyang felt to be a betrayal.

The relationship was salvaged somewhat in 2000, when Russia’s president at the time, Vladimir Putin, made a historic visit to North Korea, the first ever by a Russian leader.

That, however, does not mean today’s relationship between the erstwhile friends is back to the same level as during the Cold War.

“The two countries used to be allies, but now they are neither friends nor foes,” said Mr Funabashi.

slee@thenational.ae