Shuttle Diplomacy

Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi originally swept to power on a platform of domestic economic reform, but his boldest initiatives so far have been in the area of foreign policy. In recent weeks in particular, Koizumi has been playing honest broker in one of the world’s most vexing conundrums: how to defuse North Korea, which claims a nuclear weapons capability.

First, in a one-day dash to Pyongyang, Koizumi secured the release of most family members of five repatriated Japanese citizens abducted by the Hermit Kingdom in the 1970s. Meeting with reporters in Tokyo last week, Koizumi sounded sympathetic to North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il, almost to the point of what some might call naivet. “I personally felt that North Korea was interested in moving forward in a positive way,” Koizumi said. “[Kim] clearly stated that the objective was denuclearization.” Koizumi might have been echoing Margaret Thatcher’s famous phrase after she met Soviet perestroika master Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time in 1985: “We can do business together.”

Immediately after talking to the press, Koizumi boarded a plane for the G-8 summit on Sea Island in the U.S. state of Georgia, where he did business with Kim’s chief adversary. George W. Bush conferred with Koizumi before anyone else, hosting the Prime Minister for a one-on-one private lunch before the summit began. Two Japanese dailies, Asahi and Mainichi, reported that Kim asked Koizumi to inform Bush that he badly wanted bilateral talks with Washington. Koizumi, said the papers, quoting a source close to the Prime Minister, told the U.S. President that “[Kim] wanted to dance [with Bush] so much as to get thirsty.” But, the papers said, Bush rejected the overture and insisted that negotiations continue through the existing six-nation forum hosted by Beijing.

By positioning himself as the one person that both Bush and Kim can talk to, Koizumi may be angling for Japan to take an increasingly prominent role in the next round of six-party talks aimed at curbing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. “Koizumi may be more important to the U.S.-North Korea relationship than anyone realizes,” says Matake Kamiya, an international-relations professor at Japan’s National Defense Academy.

Others dismiss the notion that Koizumi has developed any real sway over Washington or Pyongyang. Indeed, some skeptics carp that Koizumi is popular with both regimes only because he readily agrees to virtually any of their demands: economic aid in North Korea’s case, and support for the U.S.’s Iraq policy. (Reaffirming his commitment at the G-8 summit, Koizumi said Japanese troops would remain in Iraq even after power transfers from the U.S. to an interim government at the end of the month.) “Japan didn’t bring North Korea to the [negotiating] table,” says Masaaki Gabe, a political-science professor at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa. “North Korea called on Koizumi when Kim felt ready.” Maybe so, but, for now, he’s having to share the stage with Japan’s Prime Minister.