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WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama's administration faces an uphill battle to win enough support from China and Russia to press an increasingly bellicose North Korea to change tack, analysts said Tuesday.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly on Tuesday welcomed "very strong statements" from China and Russia over Pyongyang's nuclear test as he looked "forward to working" with them on drafting a UN Security Council resolution.
He stopped short of saying whether the resolution would lead to some form of sanctions.
Several analysts said chances are slim to none for Russia and China -- both veto-wielding permanent council members along with the United States, Britain and France -- to go with punitive sanctions.
"It's clear that the Chinese are moving closer to the US position, but I don't know if this means close enough," Korea analyst Scott Snyder told AFP.
He said that after North Korea test fired a ballistic missile on April 5, the Chinese signed on to sanctions against three North Korean firms implicated in missile production.
"That does send a signal that the Chinese may be willing to engage with the international community in a broader sanctioning effort," said the analyst with the Asia Foundation think tank.
"But I think it's probably going to fall short of what would be considered necessary to be decisive in changing North Korea's current course," he added.
He said China may agree to financial sanctions against regime members -- as it did after the first nuclear test in 2006 -- but not to oil and trade sanctions that could send refugees across the Chinese-North Korean border.
The problem, Snyder said, is that the United States and China have yet to settle on a "strategic framework" in which they have a common vision for the future of North Korea.
For example, he added, China dreads the idea of North Korea reuniting with a more powerful US-allied South Korea.
Dan Blumenthal, an analyst with the neo-Conservative American Enterprise Institute, and Robert Kagan, a Washington Post columnist, see no hope at all of China and Russia agreeing to sanctions.
They asked what will dissuade Kim Jong-Il and his regime from acquiring nuclear weapons.
"Isolation and more punitive sanctions would make sense if China and Russia would go along. But they haven't and they won't," the writers said in a column in Tuesday's Washington Post.
"Beijing is content to live with a nuclear and anti-Western North Korea," the pair wrote.
"While China fears a collapsed North that would flood its struggling northeast with refugees, it also fears a united, democratic, prosperous Korea allied with the United States," they added.
Washington has little choice but to wait until Kim, who reportedly suffered a stroke last August, is succeeded by a leader who "can make the strategic decision to abandon the nuclear weapons program," the analysts said.
They also recommended in the short run that Washington bolster US and allied missile defense and deterrent capabilities, increase multilateral efforts to stop North Korean proliferation, and bolt the six-party nuclear talks.
Kelly said the Obama administration still aimed to return to the nuclear disarmament talks that involve the two Koreas, China, the United States, Russia and Japan, even if the prospect appeared remote.
Apart from the North Korean, Clinton has spoken with all her counterparts in the six-way talks, including Yang Jiechi of China and Sergei Lavrov of Russia, Kelly said.
In her conversation with Lavrov, Clinton "reiterated the importance of a quick, unified response to North Korea's provocative action," Kelly told reporters.
A foreign ministry source in Russia, which this month chairs the Security Council, said his government would support firm UN action but ruled out what he called a blockade or isolation.
- AFP /ls
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