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April 11, 2013

Kerry Heads to Asia to Reassure Allies of U.S. Support

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

MANAS, Kyrgyzstan — With tensions on high in the Korean Peninsula, Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in South Korea on Friday in an attempt to reassure American allies in the region that the United States remains committed to their defense.

Besides stops in South Korea and Japan, Mr. Kerry will also visit China to urge officials there to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, according to a senior State Department official traveling with Mr. Kerry.

Asia is the final leg of Mr. Kerry’s six-nation trip, which has already taken him to Turkey, Israel and Britain, where he attended a meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations in London. His trip comes as the government of Kim Jong-un has been making preparations to conduct a test launching of a medium-range Musudan missile with a potential range of 2,500 miles.

The State Department official said that the United States wanted China to crack down on the illicit flow of funds that move through front companies and banks and that the North Korean government uses to support its nuclear weapons program.

“We want to see them do what we do, what the Japanese do, what the South Koreans do, which is to stick to U.N. Security Council resolutions,” the official said, and “stop those money trails.”

The second step the United States wants the Chinese to take is to “carry some tough message to Pyongyang and make it clear to them that denuclearization is also their goal,” the official said.

Complicating the situation, the United States does not have a good sense of how decisions are being made in Pyongyang.

A working assumption, however, is that Mr. Kim’s recent bellicose statements and saber-rattling is intended to shore up his power at home and assure the North Korean military that it will retain the first claim on resources — what policy analysts call the “military first” policy.

“His real goal, of course, is regime survival,” the State Department official said. “So I still believe that is the ultimate goal and that is what he is trying to do.”