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I. United States1. ROK Intelligence Chief Visits US Korea Herald (Chon Shi-yong, "INTELLIGENCE CHIEF LIM ON SECRET VISIT TO U.S. TO DISCUSS N. KOREA POLICY," 2/14/01) reported that ROK officials said on February 13 that Lim Dong-won, ROK director general of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), is on a secret trip to the US for talks with officials there on the DPRK. Officials said Lim left Seoul on February 11 and will stay in the US until this weekend. A senior ROK official said, "Lim will meet George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other senior officials during his stay in the United States." The official also said Lim's trip to the US has little to do with ROK President Kim Dae-jung's planned trip to the US next month. The official said, "The groundwork for President Kim's trip to the United States had already been laid by Foreign Minister Lee Joung-binn, who visited Washington February 5-10. The exact date for a summit between President Kim and U.S. President George W. Bush has yet to be fixed, but it is 100 percent certain that it would take place within next month." ROK officials said Lim's trip to the US is mainly aimed at acquainting US President George W. Bush's aides with Kim's approach toward the DPRK. A top official said, "You should know the fact that Lim is a chief architect of the President's reconciliatory 'sunshine policy' toward North Korea." [Ed. note: This article was included in the US Department of Defense's Early Bird news service for February 14, 2001.] 2. Missile Defense and the PRC Agence France Presse ("US FEELS MORE DIALOGUE NEEDED ON MISSILE DEFENSE, CHRETIEN TELLS CHINA," Beijing, 2/14/01) reported that a senior Canadian official said on Wednesday that visiting Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien told PRC officials that the US is willing to engage in more dialogue on controversial US plans for an anti-missile defense system. The official said US President George W. Bush told Chretien during a meeting in Washington early this month that "more work" needs to be done, and Chretien reiterated that when he met with PRC President Jiang Zemin on February 13. The senior Canadian official on Wednesday emphasized that Chretien was not in any way acting as a messenger between the US and the PRC, but merely related the contents of his previous talks with Bush. Chretien met with Bush on February 5 and following the meeting, Chretien told reporters that Bush knows "he will have to convince every US ally as well as the Russians and Chinese" on the plans to build the anti-missile defense system. 3. Russian-Japan Airspace Associated Press (Sarah Karush, "RUSSIAN WARPLANES FLY NEAR JAPAN," Moscow, 2/14/01) reported that Japan's Foreign Ministry called in a Russian diplomat to protest Russian military air exercises near two neighboring nations on Wednesday. The Japanese defense agency said the Russian military planes violated Japanese airspace twice. Koichiro Oshima, a Japanese defense agency official, said four planes including TU-22 bombers, were spotted late Wednesday morning in the Japanese airspace off Rebunto island and two TU-22 bombers were spotted later in the same area. Oshima said the planes flew over Japanese airspace for about three minutes each time and Japanese fighters scrambled toward the Russian warplanes after they were spotted on radar screens, but no encounter occurred. Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said, "We again analyzed all the actions of our pilots, and there were no violations of Japan's airspace." Russian officials said there was nothing illegal or unusual about either exercise. Russian Air Force spokesman Alexander Dobryshevsky said, "We fly without violating anything. We don't complain when every day a dozen NATO planes fly along our shores." Some military analysts said Wednesday's flights were part of a pattern of increased air activity aimed at showing off Russian military might. Alexander Pikayev, a military analyst at the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, said, "Russia has sharply increased test flights of its planes since NATO's campaign in Kosovo. The military wants to show that it's too early to write Russia off." Pikayev said Wednesday's exercises may also be a response to recent signals from the US that Russia no longer occupies a privileged place in US foreign policy. 1. Missile Talks The Korea Herald (Shin Yong-bae, "2 KOREAS TO ATTEND MISSILE TALKS IN MOSCOW," Seoul, 02/14/01) reported that the ROK and the DPRK will attend an international meeting on February 15 establishing a new global monitoring system to stop missile proliferation in Russia. An ROK Foreign Ministry official said, "We were told that North Korea had recently informed Russia of its intention to participate in the Global Control System (GCS) meeting." The ROK government dispatched an official dealing with arms reduction to Russia earlier in the day for the expert-level GCS conference, the second of its kind. Russia invited the two Koreas to the inaugural meeting of the GCS last March. However, the DPRK did not participate in the first conference without giving specific reasons. Diplomatic observers said the DPRK might have changed its attitude to use the conference as an opportunity to spread opposition to the US promotion of a missile attack shield system called the National Missile Defense (NMD). 2. ROK- DPRK DMZ Accord The Korea Herald (Shin Yong-bae, "UNICEF CHIEF TO VISIT KOREA TO DISCUSS SEOUL'S AID," Seoul, 02/14/01) reported that ROK Foreign Ministry officials said Tuesday that Executive Director Carol Bellamy of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) will visit Korea on February 17 to discuss areas of mutual concern, including an increase in ROK aid to the global agency. The top UNICEF official is scheduled to meet ROK President Kim Dae-jung and other ROK officials on boosting governmental aid to the fund and the ROK's chairmanship of a special UN session on children in September.
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