UK ties with N. Korea leave few out in cold

By Dominic Evans

LONDON (Reuters): First Iran's revolutionary clerics, then Sudan's military rulers and Libya's maverick leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Now Stalinist North Korea, one of the world's most isolated nations, is the target of cautious British efforts to warm ties with countries it once dismissed as rogue or pariah states.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, announcing plans on Thursday to open relations with North Korea for the first time since its creation more than 50 years ago, said the move "should help engage North Korea by bringing it in from the cold".

"The opening of diplomatic relations is not in any way an approval of the conduct of the regime," Cook said on a visit to Seoul. "But it may well be helpful in resolving... the strong tension between it and South Korea."

The step follows a flurry of diplomatic icebreaking between the West and impoverished North Korea. Canada, Italy and Australia have already established relations and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is due to visit this weekend.

It also comes after Britain's tentative rapprochement with a handful of countries until recently considered beyond the pale.

In January Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi made the first visit to London by an Iranian minister since Tehran's 1979 Islamic revolution. Last year Britain resumed ties with Sudan, broken off when it backed U.S. missile strikes on a Khartoum pharmaceutical company.

It also ended a 15-year break in relations with Libya triggered by the 1984 killing of a British policewoman. And last year Cook became Britain's foreign minister to meet his Cuban counterpart since the 1959 Cuban revolution.

"If you can bring former pariah states into dialogue, that must help make the world a safer place," Cook said at the time.

With the election defeat last month of Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic, only President Saddam Hussein's Iraq remains firmly stuck on London's list of pariah states.

But the policy of engagement also has pitfalls.

Cook has twice this year postponed a groundbreaking visit to Tehran. Both sides blamed the delay on packed ministerial schedules but British officials, worried by a conservative backlash against moderate President Mohammad Khatami, privately concede that a visit now could backfire.

The political risks of resuming ties with Libya -- a move described as premature by the United States -- were also highlighted by news last year that Britain knew Tripoli was acquiring banned Scud missile parts even as it negotiated restoring diplomatic links with London.

Critics said the revelations undermined Cook's pledge to pursue an "ethical" foreign policy.

Britain's opposition Conservatives warned Cook on Thursday to be similarly on his guard in dealing with North Korea.

"We should remember that North Korea's despotic regime treats its own people with contempt and has attempted to blackmail the world using the threat of nuclear weapons," Conservative foreign affairs spokesman Francis Maude said.

"Britain should continue to sup with a long spoon."

Peter Ferdinand, an Asia specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs also sounded a cautious note.

"I'm not sure what leverage Britain would have over North Korea if it turned out it was not doing everything which fits with people's views of what a normal state should," he said.

Western nations suspect North Korea of supplying nuclear and missile parts to such countries as Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, charges which Pyongyang denies.

But Damon Bristow, head of the Asia program at London's Royal United Services Institute, said building bridges to North Korea was unlikely to backfire on Cook.

"He's more likely to get flak for selling arms to Indonesia than establishing relations with North Korea," he said. "We have relations with China, Pakistan and India. All those countries have flouted international arms control and it has not affected his standing."