Madam, - Your Editorial entitled "North Korea's Nuclear Threat" (October 10th), in which you blame the United States for the failure of negotiations with North Korea, is an inaccurate picture of the diplomatic negotiations that have led us to this point.
Under the Bush administration, the US has met directly with North Korea multiple times. Former Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly met the North Koreans directly. He also talked to them under the aegis of the "three party talks" (US, China, and North Korea) and under the aegis of the six-party talks. Current assistant secretary Christopher Hill has met North Korean delegates repeatedly in the context of the six-party talks.
North Korea's nuclear status is not a bilateral issue between the US and North Korea. It is a regional and global security issue and we believe that the six-party talks provide the best venue for resolving it. As the North Korea missile tests last summer proved, the people most threatened by a nuclear North Korea are its immediate neighbours: South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
Implying, as you seem to do in your Editorial, that this is an issue to be resolved on a bilateral basis ignores the concerns of other countries directly affected by the actions of the North Koreans.
In September 2005 North Korea signed a joint statement within the framework of the six-party talks that offered a clear path to a positive future and concrete benefits in return for carrying out its commitment to denuclearise. Unfortunately, the North Koreans have refused to carry out their commitments in the joint statement and return to the negotiations in spite of repeated US assurances on security. All of the partners in the six-party process have put concerted efforts into urging North Korea to return to the negotiating table. None of the parties, except North Korea, has put conditions on returning to the talks. It is time for North Korea to listen to its neighbours and begin serious work toward creating a nuclear- free Korean peninsula. And, if it will not return to the talks of its own volition, the correct forum for the debate of next steps is the UN Security Council, where all concerned parties have the opportunity to voice their opinions.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern expressed Ireland's support for this position when he commented on the reported nuclear test saying: "This is a threat to regional security and in direct contravention of the objectives of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. It runs directly contrary to the will of the international community, as expressed by the UN Security Council, and it also ignores the patient efforts of the DPRK's neighbours to work constructively with it. I call on the DPRK to refrain from further dangerous acts and to return immediately and without preconditions to the six-party talks."
The United States calls for the same thing. - Yours, etc,
JONATHAN S BENTON, Chargé d'Affairs, US Embassy, Dublin 4.
Madam, - Piaras Mac Einrí (October 12th) denounces the world's "leisurely" approach to Israel's nuclear arsenal which, he argues, contrasts starkly with the "urgency being expressed in the North Korean case." However, the two situations could scarcely be less comparable.
Israel's sole aim in developing nuclear weapons was national self-defence. Ben Gurion believed that the bomb, in the words of historian Avi Shlaim, "constituted the only counter to the numerical superiority of the Arabs and the only sure guarantee of Israel's survival" in the face of their then genocidal designs. And Jerusalem's "bomb in the basement" strategy has proved its effectiveness in this regard. For instance, the war aims of the Arabs in 1973 were limited by their awareness of Israel's atomic arsenal, while Anwar Sadat later said that his decision to seek peace in 1977 was significantly influenced by the realisation that he could never defeat a nuclear-armed Israel.
More recently, Iraq's failure to deploy chemical warheads during its attack on Tel Aviv in 1991 has been attributed to Saddam Hussein's fear of an unconventional Israeli reprisal.
Israel has repeatedly pledged that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The fact that Golda Meir's government did not authorise their use in 1973, even as the defence minister was warning of the "end of the Third Temple," is testament to Jerusalem's prudent and responsible custodianship of its arsenal. Any country respecting Israel's right to live in peace and security has nothing to fear from it.
The same, quite simply, cannot be said of a North Korean nuclear bomb. - Yours, etc,
SEAN GANNON, Chairman, Irish Friends of Israel, Ontario Terrace, Dublin 6.