Clinton to visit next week to discuss joint response
By Na Jeong-ju
Staff reporter
U.S. President Barack Obama expressed his full backing for South Korea and its investigation into the sinking of the Navy vessel Cheonan near the inter-Korean West Sea border, Cheong Wa Dae said Tuesday.
President Lee Myung-bak and Obama spoke over the phone for about 25 minutes earlier to discuss a joint response to the naval tragedy.
"Obama told Lee that he fully trusts Seoul and backs its handling of the incident," the presidential office said in a press release.
Obama said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will fly to Seoul next week to discuss the case, adding the U.S. will closely cooperate with South Korea to deal with the aftermath. Clinton is scheduled to hold high-level meetings in Beijing from May 24 to 25.
Following weeks of joint investigations by naval experts from the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia, the South Korean military will announce the results on Thursday.
Sources say the investigators have concluded that the cause of the sinking, which claimed the lives of 46 sailors, was a surprise torpedo attack by North Korea.
President Lee plans to call the leaders of the countries involved in the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program this week to share the outcome and urge a joint international reaction to the alleged act of provocation, his aides said.
The Lee administration is seeking to refer the case to the U.N. Security Council, but it's not clear whether Obama would back the move.
Following the conversation between Lee and Obama, the White House said in a statement, "They emphasized the importance of obtaining a full accounting of the event and committed to follow the facts of the investigation wherever they lead."
It, however, stopped short of blaming North Korea.
"The leaders reiterated that North Korea must live up to its commitment to eliminate its nuclear-weapons program, comply with its international obligations under relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions, and put an end to belligerent behavior toward its neighbors," said the statement.
Secretary Clinton will make another visit to Seoul in July, along with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for the first-ever two plus two security talks with their South Korean counterparts. The upcoming meeting is the result of an agreement made between Lee and Obama in Seoul last November.
The two leaders also agreed to hold a bilateral summit in late June on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Toronto, Canada, Cheong Wa Dae said.
South Korea to Accuse North of Torpedo Attack
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: May 18, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank one of its warships in March, killing 46 sailors, according to government officials and domestic news reports on Tuesday. South Korean officials are preparing to announce the results of their investigation later this week.
Choi Jae-Ku/Yonhap, via Associated Press
A crane salvaged the bow section of the South Korean naval ship on April 24.
Related
Times Topics: North Korea | South Korea
The much anticipated finding will accuse North Korea of committing one of the worst military provocations on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War, deepening tensions between the countries. North Korea, denying involvement in the sinking, has vowed to retaliate against any attempt to link it with the March 26 explosion that broke the South Korean corvette in half near a disputed sea border. But the South has pledged “resolute measures,” including economic sanctions, once the investigation is complete.
“We will blame a torpedo attack and link it to North Korea,” said a government official briefed on the investigation, adding that the authorities were still fine-tuning an official announcement to be made on Thursday.
He refused to discuss forensic evidence that will be cited in the report.
In a series of closed-door briefings scheduled for Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry intends to present to Chinese, Russian, Japanese and European diplomats “scientific and objective evidence to back up the conclusion that it was a North Korean torpedo attack,” said the South Korean news agency Yonhap.
The finding is hardly a surprise. In recent weeks, South Korea’s defense minister has said that a torpedo attack was the likely cause of the sinking and that residue of an explosive used in torpedoes had been found in the ship’s hull.
But South Korea has carefully marshaled its evidence in a multinational investigation into the sinking to try to ensure that it can rally international support for economic and diplomatic sanctions against the North.
Investigators established what they said was a critical forensic link when they matched metal pieces and traces of explosive recovered from the ship and the site where it sank with a stray North Korean torpedo secured by the South seven years ago, Yonhap and other South Korean news outlets reported. They also said they had found a fragment believed to be part of a North Korean torpedo’s propeller.
They also found a serial number on fragments of a torpedo propeller that further strengthened the belief among South Korean, United States, Australian and other experts in the investigation that it was a North Korean attack, the newspaper Chosun Ilbo said Wednesday, citing an unnamed government source.
The investigators have been scrutinizing intercepted North Korean military communications to try to link the attack to a North Korean submarine, officials here said.
South Korean officials said that if they proved that the ship had been attacked by a torpedo, people would naturally believe that the attacker was the North, with its long history of military and terrorist provocations against the South.
But it remains unclear whether the forensic evidence the South has so far accumulated will be convincing enough to force China, a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council and a North Korea ally, to support a statement or resolution denouncing the North.
President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea needs Chinese support. His plan to punish the North would further weaken his country’s already diminished diplomatic leverage over the North Koreans, because it would deepen the North’s economic dependence on China at the expense of inter-Korean trade, analysts said.
Meanwhile, opposition candidates in local and provincial elections on June 2 accused Mr. Lee of whipping up anti-North Korean sentiments to win conservative votes for his party’s candidates.
“The government is unable to present any factual evidence that the ship was broken in half by a torpedo,” Yoo Si-min, an opposition candidate, said in a radio interview. “If they make their announcement without such evidence, they will make South Korea an international laughingstock.”
Mr. Lee planned to make a speech next week to follow up on the announcement on Thursday by the Defense Ministry. In recent weeks, he and other senior officials have dropped hints that the North was to blame, although they have not formally accused it.
South Korean officials have suspended financing for government-level exchanges with North Korea and have asked South Korean companies not to start any new deals with the North.
Mr. Lee talked with President Obama on Tuesday. The White House later said that the two leaders were “committed to follow the facts of the investigation wherever they lead.” The finding of a torpedo attack would almost certainly darken the prospects for inter-Korean relations, which have deteriorated badly since Mr. Lee’s inauguration in 2008.
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