[7月25日] North Korea Signs On to Southeast Asia 'Amity' Pact
>> Download MP3 Audio
Seoul
24 July 2008
North Korea has signed what amounts to a nonaggression treaty with 24 nations. The signing took place on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian regional forum in Singapore. Observers are calling the move an important symbolic step for the isolated North's foreign policy. VOA's Kurt Achin reports from Seoul.
North Korea's foreign minister signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation - often called the TAC - at the conclusion of the Association of Southeast Asian nations regional security forum, Thursday in Singapore.
The deal was drafted in 1976, and has been signed by all of ASEAN's ten members, plus 14 other nations including South Korea, with whom North Korea has never formally concluded its 1950s war.
Alan Chong, a political science expert at the National University of Singapore, says the TAC is very general, but sets a framework for peace.
"It has been morally binding in a positive way rather than legally binding. It is a diplomatic device that commits signatories to this notion of a minimal peaceful coexistence, you know, 'Don't resort to the use of arms and other physical hostile measures the moment you have international disputes,'" said Chong.
Chong says North's Korea's move is an important step away from its pariah status.
"The signing of this can be seen as the attempt to distinguish North Korea from the other so-called rogue states of the world," he added.
Professor Purnendra Jain is head of Asian Studies at Australia's Adelaide University. He agrees that North Korea is making an overture to the international community.
