The WaPo's top story has the Bush administration preparing to give North Korea a "get out of the Axis of Evil free" card as the "six party talks" regarding its nuclear programs bear limited fruit. Note the lead country in making the deal: China.
KYOTO, Japan, June 26 -- Nearly seven years after President Bush described it as part of "an axis of evil" and less than two years after it stunned the world by exploding a small nuclear device, Kim Jong Il's Stalinist dictatorship in North Korea appears on the brink of emerging from decades of diplomatic isolation.
North Korea on Thursday handed over to Chinese diplomats here a long-awaited declaration detailing its rogue nuclear program, clearing the way for an increase in international aid and removal of the country from a U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism. The Bush administration has announced that when the declaration is handed over, it will start a process of removing North Korea from the list.
The president is scheduled to speak about North Korea this morning.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei said that following receipt of the document "the United States will implement its obligations to remove the designation of (North Korea) as a state sponsor of terrorism and to terminate applications of the Trading with the Enemy Act."
NoKo's declaration will not even be "complete." The Bush administration is in such a rush to wring at least one success out of the last eight, miserable years, its willing to pull the plug on NOKO's terror designation without actually finding out what nuclear weapons it has, or whether it has transferred nuclear technology to other countries, including Syria. Huh??? The announcement left poor Condi Rice explaining that what the Six Parties will get -- an accounting of how much plutonium North Korea has produced over the years -- will give us "the upper hand" in understanding Kim's nuke program. Whatever helps you sleep at night, mama. As the Asia Times' Donald Kirk points out:
The declaration contains no clues about the caves and redoubts, the laboratories and production facilities where North Korean scientists are believed to have begun to learn how to fabricate a warhead from highly enriched uranium. It does not admit acquisition of centrifuges from the disgraced Pakistan physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and it says nothing about acquiring from his network the technology if not the materiel or the training and experience needed to go the final steps to production of a uranium bomb.
Nor does the declaration reveal anything about proliferation of North Korea's nuclear materiel, technology, training and expertise to other countries, notably to Syria, where the Israelis bombed a facility to oblivion in September. Similarly, it maintains silence on North Korea's history of nuclear exchanges with other Middle Eastern countries, notably Iran, which has long boasted of using highly enriched uranium for electrical power while denying any military purposes.
Equally important, the declaration leaves out the question of what North Korea has done with all the plutonium produced for warheads at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 100 kilometers north of Pyongyang. There's no word on how many warheads it has there, leaving intelligence analysts to repeat longstanding estimates of anywhere from six to a dozen.
After having insisted repeatedly that North Korea had to "come clean" on its uranium program and proliferation, and also account for all the plutonium warheads, the US decided to forsake that approach in the interests of advancing the protracted process of getting North Korea finally to abandon the entire program.
Which is kind of strange, since the U.S. insisted -- to the point of invasion -- that Saddam Hussein "come clean" and bear his complete soul regarding his nuclear "programs." Bush was not satisfied with Saddam's declaration of how much nuclear material it had, and what it destroyed. But with North Korea, lack of detail is no impediment to making a deal. Meanwhile, we await a similar softening when it comes to Iran, which has repeatedly insisted (with back-up from the IAEA,) that it has no nuclear weapons program. Ironic, ain't it?
But hey, today's momentous announcement won't be all for naught. There will be "good explosion video!"
(Washington Post) -- North Korea has said it will follow up on the release of the declaration by blowing up, as early as Friday, the cooling tower of its Yongbyon nuclear facility. It has invited some Western media to televise the largely symbolic event at the plant, which U.S. inspectors say has been substantially dismantled over the past year.
Alright!!!
Meanwhile, Steve Clemons is much less cynical than I am, and he makes a good point about the dissymmetry between the U.S. postures on North Korea and Iran:
This is huge news -- and is a giant step in putting US-North Korea relations on a new and more constructive track. This is a success for the Bush administration -- and more importantly for Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian & Pacfic Affairs Christopher Hill who has been a punching bag for former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton who has been spitting on Hill's deal-making for the last year.
There are still a lot of questions ranging from the interesting issue of North Korea cooperation with Syria's alleged nuclear facility that was destroyed by Israel and other issues -- but when President Bush gave Colin Powell the positive nod in the first week of April 2003 to proceed with the Six Party Talks, Bush and Cheney ignored Iran's offer of a structure for normalized US-Iran relations the very same week in 2003.
The contrast in circumstances between where America is today with North Korea and where we are with Iran is vital to note. We 'engaged' North Korea and blew it with Iran.
Clemons also makes the point that the agreement could not have been reached without China, which was the lead negotiator in the talks that finally brought Kim around. And he says there's good news in the deal for Barack Obama:
Barack Obama's inclination towards engagement with problematic leaders around the world now is now buttressed by an experience of the George W. Bush administration.
We await John McCain's statement about how we didn't so much "talk" to North Korea as we invaded them psychologically ... for 100 years... oh my damn...
Meanwhile, an interesting op-ed in the WaPo this morning raises the question of whether the same "pressure principles" -- talking and not threatening to invade -- might apply to the arguably wicked Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Swaminathan S. Anklesaria, an editor at the Economic Times, (and who also writes a terrifically titled column in the Times of India called "Swaminomics," gotta love that... argues there is no moral ground to oust Mugabe, despite his sins.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
