So Much for ‘Peace in Our Time’

[Sorry for the earlier comments glitch; please e-mail me if you have problems.]  

OK, now the diplos have flown home. 

Talks on halting North Korea’s nuclear program broke down abruptly on Thursday with the country’s chief nuclear envoy flying home after a dispute over money frozen in a Macau bank could not be resolved.

Kim Kye Gwan flew out of Beijing after refusing to take part in six-party talks to push forward a February agreement calling for North Korea to begin winding down its nuclear programs in return for energy aid and political considerations.

Kim waved to reporters when he arrived at the airport but did not say anything.  [AP, Bo Mi-Lim]

How predictable.  I feel compelled to repeat that this breakdown originates in the U.S. Treasury Department’s action against a bank where North Korea was laundering the proceeds of crime, including the counterfeiting of our currency.  After months of insisting that “law enforcement” matters were not part of denuclearization talks, Hill met Kim in Berlin and reversed that position, apparently promising to “resolve” Treasury’s investigation into Banco Delta Asia within 30 days.  We did “resolve” it, and of course, Treasury told us what everyone — especially Kim Jong Il — already knew, that BDA was a dirty bank.  We never agreed to give the North Koreans back a penny, at least not on the face of Agreed Framework 2.0.  If the North Koreans expected otherwise, I have to wonder why Hill didn’t dispossess them of that expectation.  On the other hand, the North Koreans did agree to show up and talk this week, and that was in Agreed Framework 2.0.  The North Koreans broke their word; we didn’t.  So whose fault is that?

Russian envoy Alexander Losyukov, who also left for home Thursday, was quoted by ITAR-Tass news agency as saying “the whole problem came from the American side.”

He said the United States failed to assure the Chinese side that the Bank of China could receive the funds, which were linked to a counterfeiting and money laundering investigation, without fear of facing U.S. sanctions or a “negative attitude” from the banking community and the U.S. government.

To do what Losyukov, China, and North Korea wanted, here’s what Hill would have had to do:  (1)  grant North Korea and the Bank of China advance immunity from our banking, counterfeiting, or money laundering laws;  (2) persuade thousands  of bank officers and shareholders worldwide not to have a “negative attitude” about accounts whose owners still aren’t known in many cases;  and  (3) ingore two U.N. resolutions that we drafted and lobbied for just months ago.  Incidentally, you have to wonder why it’s taking so long to sort our the ownership of the accounts and release the funds.  Maybe … because someone rushed Treasury to conclude its investigation before we knew all the facts?

Let’s hear it for multilateral diplomacy.   Lesson One  today is that no matter how awful the behavior of the North Koreans, it’s always our fault for somehow  provoking them.  Losyukov’s government also voted for UNSCR 1718, but to put it mildly, there isn’t much of a rule-of-law culture in Russia, or in the U.N. itself.  In a sense, Losyukov is right, which brings us to Lesson Two:  you don’t have a deal unless you have “a meeting of the minds,” which is why people write and sign agreements.  We did bring this on ourselves in one sense.  In our desperation to reach this agreement, we  allowed the other parties to harbor some  unrealistic expectations that sheltered in an agreement so amorphous that it’s almost completely impossible to decipher its meaning. 

“The difficulty of this issue is beyond our expectations and due to some technical and procedural issues we had not expected completely before,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference. 

Like I said.  And as a result, the talks  have broken  down, nothing is achieved, and we’re the ones who get blamed.  Yongbyon (GE pics here) churns out its smoke signals with nary a U.N. inspector in sight, the shutdown deadline is approaching rapidly, and of course, we — sorry, the South Koreans —  are  about to give the North Koreans 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil anyway, even though Chris Hill told Congress that the payoff was to be “coordinated” with North Korea’s compliance.

And if that’s not a bad enough omen, consider this:

North Korea said Thursday it will convene a parliamentary session in mid-April just days before the deadline for the shutdown of its nuclear facilities under a February denuclearization agreement. 

“The fifth session of the 11th Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK will be convened in Pyongyang on April 11, according to a decision of its Presidium promulgated Wednesday,” the Korean Central News Agency said. DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The meeting comes just two days before the deadline set by the landmark Feb. 13 agreement for North Korea’s shutdown of its main nuclear reactor and allowing U.N. inspectors back into the country.  [Yonhap]

Kim Jong Il  is convening  his rubber-stamp parliament, which has no power and no  function but to serve as a prop audience for bombastic rhetoric,  four days before Kim Il Sung’s birthday.   Does that seem  like an  auspicious occasion for Kim Jong Il to announce that he’s giving up the “nuclear deterrent” he starved two million people to get?

If this agreement is not to degenerate into a protracted farce  — and no deal at all would be a  far better thing —  this is our last chance to stop it.  Here is what we should do now:

1.  Stop the delivery of the fuel oil until North Korea shows up to “discuss” its full nuclear disclosure, as it agreed.

2.   Clarify that North Korea must “shut down and seal” Yongbyon as agreed  by April 13th.

3.  Declare our Banco Delta obligations fully  resolved and reaffirm that North Korea is bound by UNSCR 1718 in its disposition of the $25 million, and that we make no promises about what Treasury will do if the funds are unlawfully diverted to non-humanitarian purposes.