NORTH KOREA: Kim Jong Il, the farcical Stalinist dictator of North Korea, who styles himself as The Dear Leader, is much more of a monster than Saddam Hussein. Jasper Becker, in Beijing, looks at a regime which should, if there is justice in world politics, get its comeuppance next year.
North Korea's Kim Jong Il is more of a monster than Saddam Hussein and ought to have been overthrown in 1993. He has killed more people than Saddam and, instead of feeding his people, has continued a costly weapons programme.
In the past eight years at least two million North Koreans, and possibly three million of the country's 22 million population, have starved to death. Despite the longest and costliest emergency food programme in recent history, this is a proportionally higher death toll than in any 20th-century famine. Like Rwanda or Yugoslavia, North Korea is a case for UN intervention and the International Court in The Hague.
Had North Korea been ruled by someone rational, it would have used the last eight years to introduce economic reforms of the sort China introduced in 1979 to normalise ties with its neighbours, above all with South Korea.
Instead, Kim Jong Il has done nothing but play one country off against another in his determination to preserve his state in a Stalinist time freeze. He has squandered aid not only on his arms programme but on extravagances ranging from hiring an Italian pizza chef and sending his son to enjoy Disneyland holidays in Japan and France. His economic projects, such as ostrich farms and opening casinos, have achieved nothing.
Not unexpectedly, the 1994 nuclear deal which presidents Clinton and Carter fixed up, has completely unravelled, but this means that at last there is a fresh opportunity for a new policy, especially in the wake of Roh Moo-hyun's victory in the recent presidential elections in South Korea.
In retrospect, the 1994 deal was a mistake. The United States should have gone ahead and removed the Kim family from power and unified the two Koreas. The then South Korean president, Kim Young Sam, was probably right to believe that, after the Great Leader's death, shortly after Carter's 1994 visit, the North would collapse with a little outside help.
A constant stream of reports dribbled out about uprisings, troop rebellions and at least one attempted coup. Many refugees interviewed in China said they had expected a US-led invasion and believed that Kim Jong Il was so unpopular that he would not have lasted long.
However, there was a widespread belief that it was too dangerous to corner the North Koreans and risk an all-out war. The US resident commander, General Gary Luck, warned of 52,000 US casualties and a further 490,000 Korean casualties.
Then, in 1995, North Korea admitted that it was starving, and Washington became its largest foreign aid donor. Sadly, when the food aid arrived in sufficient quantities, it was too late to save many lives. Despite hopes that foreign aid, running to $2 billion, could be used to coax the North into taking steps to help itself, this has not happened.
North Korea has not even bothered to comply with the mandatory preconditions for food aid such as proper monitoring and nutrition surveys. Rather than fostering change, the aid may have prevented a collapse and strengthened the state's power over the populace.
Nothing tried in the past eight years either by Washington or by Seoul has persuaded the North to drop its weapon's programme and change its leadership and its policies.
Rather, Kim Jong Il seems more convinced than ever that what kept him in power was his his long-range rocket programme and his nuclear bomb programme. He keeps trying to signal that if only the US gives him what he really wants - diplomatic recognition, a treaty of non-aggression and a massive economic aid programme - then he will relinquish these.
Kim Jong Il wants to be assured that his state will not disappear like East Germany and that he will not end up like the Ceausescus in Romania. Yet, realistically, he can never voluntarily abandon the weapons of mass destruction, because they provide the only reliable guarantee that Washington will never go back on its word.
Giving Kim such guarantees is so morally repugnant, in view of his record, that President Bush has rejected this strategy out of hand. Equally, it is out of the question, especially after Mr Roh's election, for the US to unilaterally prepare an invasion. Without the full backing of South Korea, Washington cannot realistically threaten war, and Pyongyang knows this.
Yet there is a third alternative. Kim Jong Il must be faced with a UN ultimatum endorsed by all the great powers. This time round, the US and South Korea must persuade Europe, Japan, Russia and China to speak and act with one voice. Kim should be presented with a coherent list of demands and a timetable which covers not just strategic nuclear issues but the entire spectrum of domestic policies.
Kim should be singled out and held personally responsible for any failure to comply by the threat of arrest and trial. At the same time, he should be encouraged to leave the country and, if necessary, even be offered a comfortable retirement.