Diplomatic fail? Australia rejected US on North Korea request

AUSTRALIA knocked back a CIA suggestion we set up an embassy in North Korea in 2014. Does it mean we’re now stuck on the path to war?

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un waves during a military parade in Pyongyang. In 2014, Australia declined to set up an embassy in the secretive nation. Picture: AP

AUSTRALIA’S 2014 rejection of a US request led by the CIA to open an embassy in North Korea in 2014 has been described as a “failure of imagination”.

And the head of a major defence and foreign policy think-tank says it may have cost us the chance to talk North Korea — now seemingly intent on conflict — out of a war

The CIA actually asked Australia twice to consider setting up a diplomatic post in Pyongyang: asking the then Julia Gillard government in 2013, and then the Tony Abbott-led government in 2014, according to The Australian.

Australia’s “thanks, but no thanks” in relation to the US request was a “failure of strategic imagination”, according to the Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Peter Jennings.

“We could be starting to have a serious discussion with the North about what it would take to get you back to the negotiation table. As it is we are on a path to war,” Mr Jennings told Sky News.

“If we’re going to end this situation on the peninsula, in any outcome other than war sooner or later, we’re going to have to start talking to them,” he said.

Initially in 2014, Mr Abbott supported the CIA’s request. But after discussing it a number of times with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and commissioning a cost-benefit analysis, the CIA’s request was never taken to cabinet.

The decision not to proceed was sealed after the government looked at the experiences of other countries who had embassies in North Korea.

Australia and North Korea have diplomatic relations, but do not have resident embassies in each others’ countries.