I had the opportunity over 12 years to run 22 meetings with North Koreans, 10 of them with the Chinese in those sessions. The baseline on this is that no one has influence over North Korea. It's extremely difficult. In the case of China, the tensions between North Korea and China are considerable. This is not a loving relationship, but it is one in which the Chinese feel they do not want North Korea to disappear. At the same time, they don't want it to start throwing nuclear weapons around in the region. That its actual influence is minimal is not quite right. There are certain things they can control with North Korea.
On balance, North Korea runs to its own drummer. This is made more complex now, because of the very quickly growing relationship between Russia and North Korea, where China is an observer of some of the things that are occurring.
We try very hard, Ms. Damoff, to bring North Koreans and the Chinese into dialogue mechanisms on what a Korean peninsula might look like. It was a major Canadian initiative in the 1990s and into the early 2000s. As Canadians, we're not part of that discussion any more. This is a grey zone interaction between the United States and China.
I don't think we can look to China to solve our North Korea problem, and the world's North Korea problem. The Chinese may just be able to put some limits on the techniques the North Koreans will use.