indeed and he is paid to do they want to stand out as a symbol of the diminishment you know like. somebody coming from where they are. to get that everything is possible for them east due to different cues and belief in the india dream. your child is there with me still rob a reminder of our top stories 2 suicide bombers have blown themselves up outside a pack a federal in indonesia where people were celebrating an easter mass at least 19 were injured in the city of macassar on silly ways the island. on the terrorism act at the entrance gate of the cathedral church in markets are today i strongly condemn the terrorism act and i have given the instruction to the police chief to take down the terrorist network to the route that day after 114 people

were killed in near montague protesters have turned out again across the country when a tree chiefs from the us and nearly a dozen other countries have denounced the actions of miramar security forces earlier security forces fired on locals trying to put out a fire in mandalay at least 60 homes were destroyed in the blaze overnight now the french energy giant total is halted operations in mozambique as fighting rages for a 5th day in the town at a town in the north nearly 200 people including foreign nationals are trapped in a hotel and parma the u.s. secretary of state has condemned tit for tat sanctions by china against american officials blinken called the sanctions on 2 u.s. commission is baseless he says it'll only add to international scrutiny of what's happening in the shin jang region where china is accused of committing genocide against the muslim weak and minorities beijing says sanctions response allies decide to nation about showing gen. hundreds of people are blocking

a major highway bangladesh as part of a nationwide strike against a visit by the indian prime minister nuri and remoting the protesters accuse modi of sticking had to risk of hatred of india he was in bangladesh to celebrate his 50th anniversary of independence. a dutch salvage firm working to free the ever given spot the suez canal and egypt says it could succeed by the start of next week the vessel stood is not free but the company hopes that high tides of the arrival of 2 more tug boats will help its operation mexico has increased its official covert 19 death toll by nearly 60 percent the government says the real number of krona virus deaths is more than 321000 not 201000 as previously reported mexico's testing rate is low and its health care system is overwhelmed you can follow those stories on our website at al-jazeera dot com updated throughout the day more news in half an hour next it's inside story.

from north korea with a warning john yang 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 i'm how much i enjoy him 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 a 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. and. 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 tests. in a statement repealing chill's 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 this 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. all right let's bring in our guests from seoul young adjunct professor at the graduate school of national defense strategy at how dumb 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 by the ministrations 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 impregnable they also kind of 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 it just there in 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 towards 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 that having those koreas. always has

been acted. i mean when u.s. tour other countries ses says something about sanctions they're always trying 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 with really believe that his north korea policy of meeting

with kim jong il and 3 times up having the singapore declaration and that hanoi apparently north korea offered to dismantle the young beyond nuclear site which is nearly 80 percent of north korea's nuclear program but he was dime made by the pompidou a bulletin 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 a 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 the north korean leader of them that sexy quite similar to what north korea 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 and 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 going to work or missions with north korean in any case anyway right so i think biden is confronted with something i think that that's fairly expected so again ty don't think unless the right people jim this thing up into 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 the neighboring country yes. yeah there was. first i mean this too response came from japan and the prime minister mr sousa himself said that this is the by late by only one 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 while japan has a good reason to do this because 1st i mean the talk olympic is really near so the and he told us 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 international political situation 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 1983 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 and therefore if this is 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 will 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 and 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 not

just koreans i think a lot of korean do you want to bargain right 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 also where 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 or they will ask for a lot and the bybee you are going to offer that which means in 6 months or something like that the north koreans are 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 as a bloody nose is too risky as long as we 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 to us anyway i mean or 3 it's

very hard for us to get a 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 ultimately 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 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 saying it's 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 quite an issue and resolving issues to 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 sanctions it 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 say 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 a really good. medium for the option of balancing so while china will hold the car 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 country than sions did not affect south africa the fact 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 tractions 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 state and unfortunately because the bad policies over the past decades as i mentioned the failure of the agreed framework and so on we have to now accept this unfortunate reality that we have a nice concrete 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 and south 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 he thought they were shirkers and free riders and everything and so i think a big part of what the biden trip was of the biden people trip 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 when we talk 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 on it's 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 jet powered would do it but i mean for the south korean government is kind of like there's a little bit of computer than 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 korea nuclear new nuclear. problem the saying is that contra 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 these very much careful in

comments on north korea with sanctions or some sort of some other thing even. if you don't 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 i will be a director of the national security council will be over 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 uclear

weapon in september 2017 so what more is left so this argument that north korea will screen get on and then whether a bastard 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 are pretty comfortable so we really need a really more realistic approach people like dr siegfried hecker the former director of los alamos laboratory who's visited north korea several times that was shown their enrichment facility he's a 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 were mentioned before knows which i think should be could be repeated by the biden ministration which is no regime

change no regime collapse and local 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 prop like 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 mark robert we just have about a minute left let me just ask you of seoul 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 us 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 european survives and 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 want 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 that you 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 in the whole team here by from.

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of our programs believes we need documentaries and news reports. subscribe to you chief pulitzer al-jazeera english. i'm rob matheson in doha the top stories on al-jazeera 2 suicide bombers have blown themselves up outside a packed cathedral in indonesia where people were celebrating easter mass at least 19 people were injured in the city of mikasa and sort of wasting. on the terrorism act at the entrance gate of the cathedral church in marcus out today i strongly condemn the terrorism act and i have given the instruction to the police chief to take down the terrorist network to the root.