cost of self employed contractors is on the question the supreme court recently ruled against which operates a similar model the taxi companies now granted all of its drivers holiday pay a guaranteed minimum wage and pension contributions it could have legal implications for other gig economy firms shaphan hundreds of other riders are planning to strike when delivery launches on the stock market they want the public to take part in a boycott at the same time they say the job's precarious enough without having to struggle to a minimum wage. 0 london. hello again the headlines on al-jazeera mean maher has seen its worst day of violence since its military seize power nearly 2 months ago children are among at least 114 deaths reported by local media in the latest crackdown against protesters iran and china have signed a 25 year cooperation pact the chinese foreign minister wang he's into iran meeting

the iranian foreign minister javad zarif and other leaders it's set to have political economic and strategic components. nearly $200.00 people including foreigners remain trapped in a hotel in mozambique which has been under attack by ice a link fighters the reuters news agency is also reporting the deaths of civilians whose convoy was attacked as they tried to flee. egyptian authorities say they're hoping to refloat a cargo vessel which has been blocking the swiss canal for 5 days the ever given stranding has disrupted global shipping because the canals one of the world's busiest waterways. so obviously it is. and as the operation is still underway as. we manage to create a space with a depth of meters and we believe we will be able to have

this shift back into operation by today the hindu nationalist party of the indian prime minister narendra modi is hoping to secure an unprecedented win in west bengal as voting gets under way for state elections a victory for the b j p there would consolidate modi's control in india's parliament the philippines is again tightening quarantine measures as hospitals in manila struggle to cope with surging coronavirus infections the lockdown would last for a week and will affect 24000000 people living in the capital of nearby provinces. hundreds of venezuelans continue to arrive in colombia escaping fighting between the military and rebels venezuela's military launched an air and ground offensive against armed groups in a poor state on sunday more than 4000 people have crossed the border and search of protection those are the headlines on al-jazeera the news hour is in 30 minutes time for now it's inside story thanks for watching by.

from north korea with a warning here on the ng threatens the u.s. following criticism of its latest missile tests so how should president joe biden handle one of america's most delicate diplomatic challenges this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program. north korea often test fires ballistic missiles and weapons to send a signal to the world it's a practice experts call weaponized diplomacy and it appears the latest launches are

a message to its traditional foe the united states john yang launched 2 short range missiles into the sea of japan on thursday analysts suggest they may be able to carry nuclear warheads the test was condemned internationally u.s. president joe biden says it violated u.n. sanctions designed to rein in the north's nuclear program we're consoling with our allies and partners. there will be responses if they choose to escalate. we will respond accordingly but i'm also prepared. for some form of diplomacy. but it has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization. this drew a sharp rebuke from the official who supervised the test in a statement repealing charles says the comments were a provocation that revealed biden's deep seated hostility towards north korea he

accused the us of using gangster like logic to oppose pyongyang's right to self-defense and he threatened more action against washington while vowing to expand the north's military power the events have drawn attention to how the new u.s. administration with joe biden as president will deal with north korea the white house has indicated it's likely to reverse the previous administration's policies on north korea and is in the final stages of a policy review on pyongyang u.s. troops have resumed joint military exercises with south korea which were cancelled by president donald trump north korean leader kim jong un and trump met 3 times to discuss denuclearization the talks collapsed without a deal north korea wants the u.s. to lift sanctions and end military drills in exchange for curbing its nuclear program. i all right let's bring in our guests from seoul young adjunct professor at the graduate school of national defense strategy at home mom university. from busan also in south korea is robert

kelly professor of political science and diplomacy a post on national university and in vienna is tarik rove former head of the verification and security policy coordination office at the international atomic energy agency thank you all for joining us robert let me start with you today at its core are these missile tests by north korea essentially the country trying to get the biden administration's attention basically saying hey we're still here pay attention to us yes i think so north korea traditionally holds some kind of stunned when there's a new president can south korea or a new president in the united states this is a way of suggesting that you know north korea cannot be bullied north korea cannot be pushed around the north koreans have a sort of an off ends it or kind of positive understanding of deterrence which is to say they don't just rebuild a big army and say you know we're pregnant will be also going to lash out occasionally to prove to us that they're still capable even though north korea's economy is pretty far behind it and south korea out he says that technologically

and so that's why i read these tests i mean there's been a lot of sort of media attention and last week or so is this a challenge to joe biden the rest of it i don't really think we need to over read too much like that i think rather this is just sort of north korea kind of doing the traditional things that it does we had a just there on her dolls from when tom personally was meeting with the north korean leader but but that was pretty rare and that has sort of fallen apart so it seems to me at least that we're kind of sliding back toward the status quo the pre-term status quo young you heard robert there is say that he believes we're sort of sliding back into the pre trump status quo when it comes to north korea and their actions let me ask you i mean north korea had been issuing warnings they had been saying that the u.s. was going to pay a price is it at all a surprise that there was 1st this test of a short range missiles and then that was followed by the test of the short range ballistic missiles yeah i mean it's no wonder i mean those koreas. always has been

acted. i mean when u.s. tour other countries ses says something about sanctions they're always tend to shoot what is the missile. so far. short range ballistic missile. i mean u.s. or other country doesn't care too much well i mean it's totally different this time target based on your experience with the i.a.e.a.'s north korea program is there anything that the un or the i.a.e.a. or other international bodies can do to improve the situation i don't think so i think it's now again back in the court of both washington and pyongyang to sort this out even though many people criticize president trump for stepping out of the iran nuclear deal i playfully believe that his north korea policy of meeting

with them jungle in 3 times up having the singapore declaration and that hanoi apparently north korea offered to dismantle the young be on nuclear site which is nearly 80 percent of north korea's nuclear program but he was dime made by the pompadour both in team and we had a failure so the united nations by having more sanctions or the i.a.e.a. i don't think at the moment are in a position to improve the situation robert how difficult has this made things for the biden ministration when it comes to its approach to north korea and when are we going to be finding out more about the buy administration's policy going forward toward north korea. i think that north korea is such an established problem now for the united states and south korea and also courage upin that i don't think that a minor sort of acting out like this by north korea is really sort of problem i don't think that it's really fair to sort of say this is a crisis but the bottom ministrations on the right that because everybody knew this

was coming right i mean we know that we had this again we had this or unique hiatus because the u.s. president personally when it was donald trump know the north korean leader of them that it's actually quite similar to what murtha has done basically for decades and so i don't really think it's fair to suggest that it's a crisis i know also doesn't have a lot of good options i think everybody in the world really realizes that at this point 5 can strike north korea sanctioning north korea further doesn't really do much good because we don't really trade or have many comic or missions with north korean in any case anyway right so i mean biden is confronted with something i think that's fairly expected so again ty don't think and let the right people gin this thing up and do something big i think they're probably ok if they just sort of talk to the allies and hold him as for the policy are you i imagine we'll come back the next month or so maybe you'll be accelerated now because of this and i imagine actually won't tell us anything we don't already know if you actually look at u.s. foreign policy towards north korea since the sixty's it's kind of been the same the whole time right which is sort of containment isolation sanction and deterrence and

you can sort of like change that a little bit on the edges but you know our options with north korea are actually quite limited there's really not that much we can do and so here we are having the same discussion we've had for decades quite honestly young what has the response been with regard to south korean defense mechanisms in the past when it comes to north korean missile tests and what is the response now to the most recent tests i mean d. m d it's the neighboring country yes. yeah you know. first i mean this to response came from japan and the prime minister mr sousa himself said that this is the bio lesion of the. u.n. sanction and and with his greed i mean us also sat stormy against this you know sure a new system is

a runge and well japan has a good reason to do this because 1st i mean the tokyo and biggest really near also the and the toddlers from the north korea can be some kind of you know obstruction and secondly i mean as the one of the reading country in part i mean the jet fan wants to you know take control of these you know the international. political situation in northeast asia and so for the china i mean it's always always the same because i mean the chinese always has been has been saying that the maintaining peace and stability on the korean peninsula and i mean the resolving issues through dialogue i mean that's what they have been saying let me go right now to tara tara where do north korea's nuclear

capabilities stand now what's the state of the country's nuclear program. well north korea actually has one of the oldest nuclear programs in the world they started in $1053.00 at the moment they now have a complete nuclear fuel cycle they have uranium mining they have uranium enrichment that is enriching uranium to reactor great uranium and also to weapon grade uranium which is over 90 percent they also have a plutonium separation capability and they have obviously demonstrated that they can make nuclear warheads that carried out 6 nuclear tests and if one looks at the use of the 6 nuclear tests each one of them has been bigger than the previous one the last test in september 2017 was nearly a 140 he looked on and so north korea and its 6 tests has demonstrated a much more advanced nuclear weapons capability than india or pakistan did so and $998.00 and therefore if this was a full program and north korea has created

a lot of bargaining chips u.s. policy to its north korea in my view has been an abject failure as have sanctions so we need a new way of dealing with north korea president trump i think started down the right line but then his own bureaucracy and establishment stymied him so now as james clapper the former director of national intelligence in the u.s. said a few years ago it is a reality that north korea has a nuclear weapon capability and it also has a delivery capability we need to negotiate with that and north korea would recant some form of nuclear weapons capability even after some agreement is reached with the united states and others robert you were talking earlier about how in some ways this is more business as usual when it comes to north korea you know in the test that they conduct how much further do you think kim jong un is going to be willing to go at this stage to get the attention of the white house and also in order to gain leverage washington. that's actually an excellent question right there yes

koreans i think i scream do you want to bargain for i think your your other guest sort of hinted at this too i do actually believe the north koreans would like to come to the table they just want a lot more than the u.s. is going to give i think that's the real reason why there is no movement here i don't think it's because u.s. leadership is sort of softer or you know flimsy or whatever that is all to the north koreans want a lot and they're going to hold out and they're in a pretty good position because it's very good for it's very hard for us to punish north korea otherwise it's almost a biting people come and offer something really substantial when i say substantial i mean really big i mean like withdrawing a u.s. closing he was based on calling you know u.s. air power to south korea something they are they will ask for a lot and the vibe you are going to offer that which means in 6 months or something like that the north koreans probably do something like this again you know we've seen that kind of cycle in the past and as long as you can't really hit north korea's launch can strike as long bloody nose too risky as long as you can't really you know hit them hard very much with sanctions because north korea cheats and you know a lot of north korea's economic activity doesn't go through us anyway i mean or 3

it's very hard for us to get her handle on north korea and as a result they can basically hold and the leadership doesn't care of their population suffers from the sanctions either break them care about their own people so they can continue to hold that there's going to wait and wait and wait and wait until the americans all to offer something really good and the american public and u.s. congress just aren't there yet but like wait 5 years you know i interrupted you a few moments ago as you were starting to talk about china let me go and ask you now we know that north korea wants to have closer relations with china what's china's stance at the moment 1st of all how are they viewing you know these most recent tests secondly how much closer do they want to be with north korea. yeah and the same is always liked is china's position on this you know the sanction issue or i mean the it always has been the same they are talking about these you know maintaining peace and stability on on an issue and resolving issues through dialogue and consultation that's what they have been saying like i'm for

saudi for years but the thing is that when u.s. or other country wants to you know. impose sanction china you still want i mean who has been you know. keeping keeping any you know. at discussion and they you they you who are the only hold the sanction and i ask oh yes they can and after that. when only after the u.s. or other country you know. some see that a little bit on the sanction and then china reads i mean that's what they have been on you know u.n. u.n. . sanction so for china. north korea is really really good trick cheap car can be used against united states or

japan so it's kind of like really good. medium for the op sure balancing so while china will hold the cards as long as they can. tarik what do we know so far about the types of ballistic missiles that were tested by north korea in the most recent tests there have been reports that north korea had indicated that these were modified versions of what's called a solid fuel de-listing missile do we know more about that type of missile perhaps how easy it is to transport or to launch. so just as with the nuclear program north korea has a full suite of ballistic and cruise missiles they have short range or battlefield missiles they have medium range missiles and they also have long range missiles so apparently 2 of the tests conducted this year were short range missiles that did

not violate u.n. sanctions and then the 2 other tests apparently were of a medium range missile and i think this was north korea's way of showing that it was still abiding by its moratorium of no nuclear tests and no long range ballistic missile test i wouldn't focus specifically on the type of missiles that were tested because north korea has the capability as regards sanctions nobody can point is single case in history where sanctions have reversed their w m d and nuclear chemical or biological weapons program in the countries sentients did not affect south africa they backed iraq didn't affect iran didn't stop india didn't stop pakistan and it's clear they haven't stopped north korea so we really need to have a completely new strategy it also means that the more the sanctions bite the north koreans then turn to cybercrime and other ways of getting the money that they need so they will get what they want and the leaderships have shown in india pakistan

iran iraq and also north korea as one of your guests mentioned that if the population has to tighten its belt that's what they will do and north korea has also seen how iraq libya and iran have been squeezed because they didn't have nuclear weapons nobody threatens north korea was going to attack nobody says all options are on the table so north korea knows and they also know that india and pakistan have been accepted as defacto nuclear weapons states and unfortunately because the bad policies over the past decades is that mention the failure of the agreed framework and so on we have to now accept this unfortunate reality that we have a nice country that has a nuclear where. well and also the means of delivery and therefore we need to look at some sort of a phased approach where the p r k gives us the assurance that it will not further busy up its missile and nuclear capability not carry out more long range missile tests and not carry out more nuclear weapons death in return for some sanctions relief and then we can hope for

some form of incremental change our balancing a better balancing of the situation there robert u.s. secretary of state and city blinken and u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin just recently went and visited both seoul and tokyo i want to ask you about how that trip was received by japanese a tough korean counterparts obviously a big topic of discussion was north korea north korea north korea's nuclear program were japan and south korea reassured by that visit i think they were i think they were i think a lot of it at least in the 1st 6 months maybe 8 months were buying people and not just here in asia but with lots and lots of u.s. allies to sort of cleaning up the damage at the trumper ministration. i mean president trump was erratic he was unpredictable he's all sorts of how language things on television he didn't care for u.s. allies they were shirkers and free riders and everything and so i think a big part of what the biden trip was with the biden people recently was just

telling everybody it's like we're back the americans are here these are my family and we're going to be sort of like running us foreign policy with professionals who are competent who know what's going on and things like that are actually vested in who actually believe the united states and stay in asia and things like that so i think that was actually probably like 60 or 70 percent of it just proving to the japanese and south koreans like the americans are normal again after this sort of like we're hiatus and that's why i don't think you heard anything really spectacular it was a lot of sort of like alliance reassurance you know we're here and it was think i don't know i'm terry gross and what we call the north koreans and what about china you know things like that all that is sort of just par for the course for the u.s. relationships out. you're in asia so actually the meeting was actually pretty spectacular which is actually a good thing it's actually really good when americans are against meetings are not actually fireworks like they were the last 4 years so i think it was actually quite young i saw you nodding along to some of what robert was saying there so i wanted to see if you had

a response but i also wanted to ask you about the same thing which was from your perspective you know how did japan how to south korea how did other u.s. allies in the region feel about that trip and were they reassured when it comes to the u.s. stance toward north korea you know of course i mean the way jet pattern would do it but i mean for the south korean government is kind of like there was a little bit of confusion well i mean. everyone think that the too close to talk in korea went well but i mean there's some of course says that something otherwise i mean there's a. disagreement between us and korea against the these you know north korean nuclear new nuclear. problem the scenes that contre other news station of the south korea is kind of sympathetic to the north korea and still wants to you know summit to wait kim jong un so says korean government he's better much careful

in comments on north korea with sanctions or some sort of some other saying even. as you go like the shoes are not clearly or pretty all dressed in this government so i think that not everyone on the same page so next week there will be a trilateral. tour in washington between the u.s. japan and korea also from south korea to be a director of the national security council will be able there so there will be some you know agreements i should expect. what's the level of concern about the idea that if the u.s. were to reenter into talks with north korea that north korea might just you know try to string that process out and utilize that time as a way to bolster their nuclear program well you know their nuclear program is already as advanced as it can be if frankly they had tested the current one nuclear

weapon in september 2017 so what more is left so this argument that north korea will screen gets on and then whether it vaster nuclear program to me doesn't really make very much sense people believe that they may have 3040 or maybe 50 nuclear weapons they can make between $7.00 to $12.00 apparently a year so they have to be comfortable so we really need a really more realistic approach people like dr secret hecker the former director of los alamos laboratory who's visited north korea several times it was shown their enrichment facility these are stanford university a few years ago he proposed quite a realistic space program robert einhorn wrote a recent article for 38 north that is also talking about her face nuclear program and i recall the op ed written in the wall street journal in august of 2017 by secretary still listen and mattis where they mention the 4 nose which i think should be could be repeated by the biden ministration which is no regime change no

regime collapse. accelerated reunification and no u.s. troops crossing the demilitarized zone the president biden has already insulted the russian president he's insulted the chinese president he's insulted kim jong un as a hitler and as a tug and then how does one expect to have a meaningful dialogue when the leader of one country the man interlocutor is insulting the others and then inviting them to a dialogue so a president biden i think who is known for rash decisions and basically insulting foreign leaders needs also to be restrained we criticize spread. sort of prompt quite justifiably but president biden there is no angel either he's not going to wave a magic wand and things are going to fall into place that we have a lot of hard work ahead we need to sit down seriously when it was working with the north koreans. had pretty good outcomes in terms of the implementation of what was

agreed it's when the politics went sour between the united states and the d.p. r. k. and then the verification arrangements carried out by the also that limit robert we just have about a minute left let me just ask you a soul has pushed for a engagement with pyongyang and has urged the international community to ease sanctions and to provide more aid for north koreans are we going to see that happen no. the u.s. government is still committed to the nuclear station a pretty robust form of it at that world opinion i think broadly is on the side of that to the south korean president went to europe for years on trying to get the europeans budge on sanctions they didn't the japanese won't budge on either even the chinese have voted for the sanctions u.n. security council even if they don't really force them as well they might you know maybe the north koreans conserve like i don't know signal what they're going to find a little bit or something like that but i think i think just too many countries in the world too many people in the world are too scared of north korea having an

unchecked nuclear program and so i think sanctions are going to be used to sort of a check to get the north koreans to behave better nuclear weapons all right we've run out of times we're going to have to leave the conversation and thanks so much to our guests young robert kelly and todrick route. and thank you too for watching you can see this and all our previous programs again any time by visiting our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a.j. inside story for me i'm a gentleman the whole team here by from. april

on out just from a 3rd wave to the vaccine roll out we'll bring you the latest developments from around the world a year into the coronavirus pandemic one a one way or behind the scenes acts and sins of the secretive world of japanese sumo. good president introduced they be secure a 6th time in power join us on april 11th for the chop election. the award winning our choice returns stories of those striving to be juicer negative impact on the planet has president joe biden kept his campaign promises we'll have special coverage and in-depth analysis of his 1st $100.00 days in the oval office april allergists iraq. it's a very bleak picture for a lot of americans out there white supremacy impacts all of our issues you're putting more money into the hands of some workers taking money out of the hands of

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