MOSCOW. July 10 (Interfax-AVN) - North Korea will not abandon its nuclear potential voluntarily, says a report drawn up at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO RAN).
"The international community should accept it as a fait accompli that the DPRK, as well as India, Pakistan and Israel, will not peacefully abandon its nuclear missile potential," says the report headlined 'The Korean Nuclear Crisis: Prospects of De-Escalation', which was presented at the institute on Tuesday.
At the present time, the international community should focus its efforts on stabilizing the situation on the Korean Peninsula and ruling out a new war there, "which is likely to lead to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction," the report says.
Nuclear weapons are "virtually the only instrument of Pyongyang's unending game of getting on humankind's nerves aimed both at inflating the myth of foreign threat and gaining more and more economic concessions from other countries to perpetuate the regime's existence," it said.
The report's authors believe that the only way to resolve the nuclear problem of North Korea is to make the country's political system evolve into a market-based economy.
"The only way to definitively settle the problem of the North Korean regime and the nuclear issue is through the DPRK system's gradual transition toward market reforms and openness," the document says.
While the regime itself is afraid of following this path, the neighboring countries could somewhat stimulate this process through a strategy of "total engagement" with North Korea, in commercial, infrastructural, and humanitarian cooperation projects aimed at changing the mentality of those receptive to reform in North Korean society, it says.
The report notes that countries concerned about North Korea's nuclear ambitions, particularly the participants in the six-party talks on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, should coordinate their efforts.
"In the absence of significant changes in the economy, the likelihood of the regime's collapse will increase. The political system's disintegration could also occur through the leadership's gradual loss of control of governance, which would lead to the country's breakup," it says.