A former senior KGB officer who held key positions in East Asia is skeptical of widely held American assumptions about Russia's rapprochement with the U.S. as it concerns North Korea policy. Such assumptions, he told East-Asia-Intel.com, have helped President Vladimir Putin camouflage his secret rapprochement with Kim Jong-Il behind Washington's back.

According to the former officer, fallacious Western assumptions include:

1. Russia considers Kim Jong-Il an unpredictable and dangerous leader.

"No, to the contrary, the Russian political elite admires him. Academician Mikhail Titarenko, Putin's key advisor on Korea, said the following in his interview with an Internet magazine www.smi.ru on Sept. 2, 2003: "Kim Jong-Il is a realistic and recognized leader. Though the DPRK is small and weak, other countries negotiate with it. Doesn't that say [something] about the skilled leadership? Kim Jong-Il has plenty of Communist-minded collaborators in Russian FSB, Army, Intelligence and Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

2. Russia, like America, is concerned about North Korean nuclear research.

"Wrong. Russia's United Institute of Nuclear Research resumed its cooperation with DPRK in March 2002 (www.dubna.ru, July 26, 2002)."

3.Russia considers North Korea to be part of the "axis of evil."

"In the vocabulary of Russian foreign policy there can be no such terms as 'outcast states' and 'states of the axis of evil,' said Alexander Yakovenko, an official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in his interview with the Novosti information agency on May 21, 2002, in advance of the visit to Moscow of Pek Nam-Sum, North Korean Foreign Minister."

4. The Russian Intelligence Community surely supports the U.S. in case of war on the Korean Peninsula.

"Moscow will probably support North Korea, as it supported Saddam Hussein. In June 2003 the delegation of the FSB, Federal Security Service, visited Pyongyang and met Woo Dong-Chik, the deputy minister of state security (Press-Center of the Federal Border Service, June 23, 2003). They discussed cooperation along the common border. Such cooperation would be crucial in the event of military action by the U.S.A. against North Korea."