US embassy cable - 03OTTAWA2358

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 OTTAWA 002358 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/CAN, WHA/PDA 
WHITE HOUSE PASS NSC/WEUROPE, NSC/WHA 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: KPAO, KMDR, OIIP, OPRC, CA, TFUS01, TFUS02, TFUS03 
SUBJECT:  MEDIA REACTION: AFGHANISTAN; NORTH KOREA 
 
AFGHANISTAN 
1.   "What should NATO do in Afghanistan?" 
The leading Globe and Mail opined (8/18): "What's to be 
done when your raison d'tre has disappeared? That has 
been the question faced by the North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization since the end of the Cold War. Who is 
NATO's enemy now that the Soviet empire is gone - 
indeed, now that Russia is an associate member of the 
Western military alliance and nations that once were 
part of the Communist Warsaw Pact are full NATO 
members? NATO's military action in Kosovo in 1999, 
which included Canadian participation, was one 
answer. Work jointly to end bloodshed in your own 
backyard. But to the United States (and this was during 
the Clinton administration), the operation in Kosovo 
was a kind of war-by-bureaucracy. Other NATO members 
played a larger strategic role than their firepower 
warranted.... Now, however, NATO has gone to 
Afghanistan. Twenty-one months after U.S. forces drove 
the Taliban from power, the 19-member NATO alliance has 
taken on responsibility for keeping the peace in 
Kabul.... [I]t is less clear to what degree NATO is to 
become a force for pro-viding nation-building as well 
as security. One goes hand in hand with the other in a 
place such as Afghanistan, where the Taliban left 
behind an institutional vacuum. NATO, though, has 
little experience in matters such as the training of 
police and judges.... The Bush administration welcomes 
NATO's new responsibilities, and for good reason. The 
U.S. military's hands are full, largely in Iraq. The 
White House may have sidelined NATO after Sept. 11, but 
now it needs the help. Washington has also noticed with 
some satisfaction that nations which opposed the 
invasion of Iraq - Canada, for one, but also the 
dastardly duo (in Republicans' eyes, anyway) of Germany 
and France - are contributing troops to ISAF, or did so 
in the past 18 months. There is evidence that the 
transatlantic rift earlier this year may quietly be 
healing, aided by the fact that ISAF's mandate is 
authorized by the UN. Indeed, some in Washington 
suggest NATO could be the perfect organization to take 
over the military occupation of Iraq. This, for now 
anyway, represents a reach. NATO must act successfully 
in Kabul before it should consider further 
deployments.... Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's President, 
has urged NATO to consider an 
expanded deployment, as has Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN's 
special representative to Afghanistan. This would 
require, by most estimates, at least another 10,000 
troops - a contribution NATO is not yet willing to 
make. Canada's military, for one, is already stretched 
to the limit. Other NATO countries, though, are capable 
of providing additional soldiers. A NATO force that 
would patrol all of Afghanistan is worth serious 
consideration. Start with Kabul, certainly, but if that 
deployment is successful, NATO should be prepared to 
take the next step." 
 
2.   "What a mess we're in" 
Contributing foreign editor Eric Margolis observed in 
the conservative tabloid Ottawa Sun (8/17): "...NATO 
troops are in Kabul not because the alliance wanted to 
get involved in Afghanistan's 24-year-old conflict, but 
because Washington browbeat Canada and its European 
allies into helping share the burden of garrisoning a 
conquered nation. Better, figured NATO 
governments, to placate Washington by sending troops to 
lower threat Afghanistan than to dangerous Iraq.... Not 
only are the U.S. and its allies mired in an 
intensifying guerrilla war in a chaotic nation, they 
now find themselves in league with world-class drug 
dealers. Afghanistan was the world's leading grower and 
exporter of opium, the base for morphine and heroin. 
When the Taliban regime drove the Afghan Communists 
from power in 1996, they vowed to eradicate opium, 
though it was the dirt-poor nation's only cash crop. By 
2001, according to UN drug agencies, the Taliban had 
totally eradicated opium production in areas it 
controlled. The only production of opium during the 
Taliban era was done by its bitter foe, the 
Northern Alliance. The Bush administration was giving 
millions in anti-drug aid to the Taliban until four 
months before the 9/11 attacks. After 9/11, the Taliban 
was demonized by the Bush administration and U.S. media 
for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden without first 
seeing evidence of his guilt. The U.S. invasion 
followed, the Taliban was overthrown and retreated into 
the mountains. When the Northern Alliance seized power 
in Kabul with help from Russia and the U.S., it revived 
opium growing and soon began 
producing morphine and refined heroin, processes 
formerly performed in Pakistan. Today, Afghanistan, a 
U.S. protectorate, is again the leading producer of 
heroin, accounting for 4,000 tons annually, 75% of 
total world production.... By helping protect Karzai 
and the Northern Alliance, Canada, like the U.S., has 
become an unwitting, but very real, accessory to the 
international heroin trade, and the partner of a 
criminal regime." 
 
NORTH KOREA 
3.   "Negotiation still best way to de-fang North 
Korea" 
Under the sub-heading, "Rogue nation is the greatest 
source of instability in the region," the left-of- 
center Vancouver Sun commented (8/18): "Six-way talks 
aimed at defusing a standoff between the United States 
and North Korea over the latter's claims it is 
developing nuclear weapons could begin as soon as Aug. 
26. Originally, North Korea insisted on bilateral 
meetings with the U.S., but last week it agreed to 
talks that would also include South Korea, Russia, 
China and Japan. Behind-the-scenes diplomacy from China 
apparently brokered the change in position.... The 
participation of the other great regional powers in 
helping to move this delicate negotiation 
forward is good news both for the U.S. and for the 
concept of multilateralism.... [B]ut the rhetoric 
between North Korea and the U.S. reached a new level of 
rancour when John Bolton, the seasoned American 
diplomat who is undersecretary of state for arms 
control, made a recent speech that personally attacked 
Mr. Kim for turning his country into a 'hellish 
nightmare.' North Korea responded by referring to Mr. 
Bolton as a 'bloodsucker' and 'human scum.' All this 
might easily be dismissed as the over-inflated rhetoric 
that sometimes characterizes political negotiations. 
Some suggest it is part of a two-track American 
strategy for weakening the North Korean dictator's 
position by drawing a distinction between him and his 
unfortunate subjects. Nevertheless, the escalating 
insults do take place against a background of rising 
tension. While it makes sense to prepare for 
the worst in dealing with a rogue state, the best hope 
for resolving the impasse and persuading the North 
Koreans to forgo nuclear weapons still looks like a 
multilateral forum in which the regional stakeholders 
most at risk can also have a say. And, as frustrating 
as the search for a solution might seem, the present 
White House would do well to hearken to the tested 
policies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Margaret 
Thatcher. They argued persuasively that the best way to 
improve odious regimes like the then-apartheid 
government of South Africa was not by isolating them, 
but by patiently drawing them into engagement with 
western-style capitalism and its benefits." 
 
CELLUCCI