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The U-N Security Council today unanimously condemned the attack that
sank a South Korean warship earlier this year. But it stopped short
of directly blaming North Korea. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with
Colum Lynch, who covers the UN for The Washington Post.

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MARCO WERMAN: The UN Security Council today unanimously condemned the attack that caused a South Korean warship to sink earlier this year. 46 sailors died in the attack on the Cheonan, and an international inquiry blamed North Korea. But the Security Council statement stops short of naming the communist country. The omission helped to ensure the support of China, which is North Korea’s closest ally. Colum Lynch covers the UN for The Washington Post and writes the Turtle Bay blog for Foreign Policy magazine. Colum, can you tell us kind of what the back story was to China’s position on this statement.

COLUM LYNCH:  Yes, I mean essentially what you had over the last several weeks was a massive campaign by South Korea with the backing of the United States, to get a very strong response to the March 26 attack against the Cheonan. The Chinese have made it clear from the beginning that they don’t want an explicit condemnation of North Korea, that they are going to take note of the fact that North Korea has told them they didn’t do anything and so the Chinese essentially blocked the council from making the kind of decisive response that the South Korean’s had hoped for. So that’s kind of the nature of the way these negotiations play out, particularly when you have key players in the security council whose allies are split on these kinds of issues. And so you see a kind of muddled, somewhat ambiguous statement, but that kind of hints at North Korea’s responsibility for this.

WERMAN:  And if you’re going to condemn such action, Colum, why bother to do it if you don’t say who you are blaming for it? I mean what purpose is to be gained in making such an ambiguous statement.

LYNCH: Well, it’s a good question. I mean usually what this does is it provides both sides with an opportunity to say that they got what they wanted. So the South Koreans will come out of this, the Americans have come out of this negotiation saying this is a very strong statement, a very strong response to the North Korean provocation and that the only one who’s really under suspicion is the North Korean’s, so it must be them. And the Chinese, of course, will leave this discussion saying that this was a balanced document that didn’t place blame on North Korea. That it showed North Korea’s claim that it didn’t do anything. At the same time it referred to this joint international investigation which did conclude that North Korea was involved. So they’re portraying this more as a kind of balanced outcome.

WERMAN: This is kind of compromised line right down the middle for a pretty bad episode. Does it seem very UN to you?

LYNCH: Yeah, I mean this is essentially an act of war. You had the North Koreans according to the Americans, the South Koreans, and all these other allied investigators saying that they have overwhelming evidence that they essentially carried out an act of war, launched a torpedo attack from a submarine at a warship, killing 46 people on board, and what you get is this highly ambiguous kind of response that seems completely out of proportion to the actual incident. But this is kind of classic diplomacy. I mean South Korea doesn’t have the ability or the influence or power to force China to put pressure on North Korea, so there’s not much they can do.

WERMAN: Now, North Korea’s UN envoy said today that this statement in which did not directly blame Pyongyang, was a diplomatic coup. He said we regard it as a great diplomatic victory. Can you tell us why he said that?

LYNCH: Well, the South Koreans came to the Security Council a couple weeks ago, they brought a whole group of naval, army intelligence, military officials from Seoul, experts from the United States, Australia, Canada. All these various countries providing the Security Council with a very detailed briefing laying out with all sorts of evidence that they had irrefutable proof that North Korea had carried out this attack. So clearly China was able to deliver a very watered-down statement, so not a bad day for the North Koreans.

WERMAN: I mean I imagine that kind of reaction though is precisely not what South Korea wanted to hear?

LYNCH: No, but this is part of the nature of their dialogue. The North Koreans are always trying to find ways of humiliating the South, of threatening them. I think that they decided that the best tone to use to embarrass the government was something that indicated that their sort of hard-fought campaign to condemn North Korea had not succeeded.

WERMAN:  Colum Lynch with The Washington Post and author of Foreign Policy magazine’s Turtle Bay blog, thank you very much.

LYNCH: Alright, thanks for having me, Marco. Take care.

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