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Category: Diplomacy

March 16, 2007

Congressional Conservatives Threaten Rebellion on N. Korea Policy

A reader and friend forwarded me a press release by three conservative Republican members of Congress (thanks), including the Ranking Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.  The press release accompanies a letter that urges “caution” on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in attempting to normalize diplomatic and trade relations with the North too quickly.  The clear subtext is that conservatives think that Rice may not be demanding enough of North Korea in meeting the necessary prerequisites on disarmament, terrorism,...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
March 15, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Yongbyon Edition

North Korea has told the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency that it will not shut down its 5-MW reactor at Yongbyon until the U.S. lifts its sanctions against the North: “The DPRK mentioned that they are waiting for the lifting of sanctions with regard to the Macau bank before they implement the part of the agreement allowing the agency to monitor and verify the shutdown of the Yongbyon facility,” ElBaradei told a news conference….  [Reuters, Chris Buckley] Kim...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 14, 2007

State: No quick removal of N. Korea from the terror list

I can imagine that the pressure from Japan has been intense, particularly in light of North Korea’s increasingly  brazen claims  about just what  the U.S. had agreed to lift, and when.  The North Koreans forced us to correct the record: North Korea will not be easily removed from the U.S. list of states that sponskor terrorism. U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that taking North Korea off the terrorism blacklist is a process that will require a lot of...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)
March 13, 2007

The Worst Friend, The Best Enemy

[Update:   My worst fears are coming true.  Now the  opposition Grand National Party  is trying to soften up its North Korea policy as it braces for a summit visit from Kim Jong Il and a presidential election this year.  One possible effect is that the GNP’s own perpetual appeaser, Sohn Hak-Kyu, could become the new flavor of the month.] One of the disadvantages of appeasing North Korea is that the North Koreans are so despised and distrusted, you can...
Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Money Laundering
March 12, 2007

UN Official: ‘We were being used completely as an ATM machine for the regime.’

Since it looks like we’re about to unfreeze a few million  in North Korean funds from  Banco Delta Asia, it’s worth remembering that another easy source of cash, representing  about as many millions in annual income, has just been abruptly terminated.  The United Nations Development Programme office in Pyongyang, North Korea, sits in a Soviet-style compound. Like clockwork, a North Korean official wearing a standard-issue dark windbreaker and slacks would come to the door each business day. He would take...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
March 11, 2007

I Can Already Write The Rest of This Story. So I Did.

BEIJING, March 10 (UPI) — North Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Saturday said the United States has promised to lift its financial sanctions against his country. “The North is keeping a close eye on the promise,” Kim Kye-gwan told reporters at Beijing’s Shoudu Airport as he headed home to Pyongyang, the Korea Times reported. “If the U.S. fails to solve the issue completely, we will have to take partial actions against it,” Kim said. I wonder if this could be true. ...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 10, 2007

Eight Questions Our Shenyang Consul General Won’t Answer

About a week ago,  I published  this post,  relaying Adrian Hong’s assertion that the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang,  in direct contravention  U.S. law,  stood by and refused entry to six North Korean refugees who where just feet from the  Consulate’s front gate.   Shortly thereafter, the refugees, Hong and other LiNK activists were arrested by the Chinese authorities.    After I published that post, a reader supplied me with the e-mail addresses of the Stephen Wickman, the U.S. Consul General in...
Categories Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Refugees
March 9, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Financial Edition

North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said Thursday that Pyongyang’s decision to halt nuclear facilities, as outlined in initial steps included in the Feb. 13 six-way agreement, will depend on the U.S. lifting of financial sanctions against North Korea.  [Kyodo News; ht Richardson] The U.S. negotiator at the six-party talks, Chris Hill, once said that “[l]ife is too short to overreact to every statement coming out of Pyongyang.”  It’s true that the North Koreans do more than their...
Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Google Earth/Money Laundering/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
March 8, 2007

The Death of An(other) Alliance?

Thank you, Vice Foreign Minister Obvious! North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan reportedly told North Korea specialists in the United States that China is “only trying to use” North Korea. Kim was in the U.S. for talks on normalizing bilateral ties.  [Chosun Ilbo] I take it His Porcine Majesty did not enjoy the buffet at the Chinese Embassy.  Or, more likely, this is just disinformation: China has no great influence on North Korea, he was quoted as saying, adding...
Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 8, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Abductions Edition

I forecast severe tire damage along the road to removing North Korea from the terrorism-sponsor list:  HANOI–Japan and North Korea opened talks here Wednesday morning on normalizing bilateral relations, but the North Korean side canceled the afternoon session apparently as a way of refusing the Japanese request to discuss the abduction issue further, the chief Japanese delegate said. However, the meeting is scheduled to resume Thursday morning at the North Korean Embassy to discuss the abduction and normalization issues, Koichi...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 7, 2007

Hill: N. Korea Must Give Up Uranium Program

[Update:   This doesn’t  sound very “newly murky:”  “I have no doubt that North Korea has had a highly enriched uranium program,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said during a visit to Seoul. …. “We would expect that when North Korea makes its declaration of nuclear facilities that that would be one of the issues addressed in North Korea’s declaration,” he told a news conference.  Good, if we really have no doubts.  Straightforward interpretation is all that can...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/Japan & Korea/WMD
March 6, 2007

Peace Is at Hand!

*    Accountability Is So Last Month:    For those who are thirsty for some rare news of someone holding Kim Jong Il accountable for anything lately, Opinion Journal has more on the end of the U.N. Development Program’s highly questionable North Korea operations, and some unsolicited advice for Chris Hill. *   ‘There’s Nothing to Wait for Here:’   Those words, from the North Korean delegate who passed reporters on his way into “normalization” talks, could be the truest...
Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK
March 4, 2007

How a U.S. Consul Helped Send Six North Korean Refugees to Kim Jong Il’s Gulag

[Update: The Shenyang Six were freed from a Chinese jail in August 2007.] The Secretary of State shall undertake to facilitate the submission of applications []  by citizens of North Korea seeking protection as refugees  …. (Title 22, United States Code, Section 7843) Back in  January, I told you the story of the Shenyang Six, a group of six North Korean refugees who sought  refuge from persecution and starvation in their homeland, and how the Chinese authorities, following their long-standing...
Categories China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Washington Views
February 28, 2007

Chris Hill Testifies at the International Relations Foreign Affairs Committee

Headlines now, details later: Hill was firm that North Korea had purchased items that had no other use but highly enriched uranium.  He said that  a failure to resolve  the HEU issue would be a deal-breaker.  Committee members of both parties also seemed to believe that North Korea must come clean on HEU. Hill left open the possibility that North Korea will still be denying the existence of its HEU program 60 days from now without breaking the deal. He...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
February 28, 2007

Welcome to the Hen House

[Update:   The  Daily NK has more on the working groups.] Those “working groups,” to which most of the  difficult unresolved issues with North Korea have been delegated, are scheduled to meet next month, and get a load of who is chairing them: South Korea will chair a working group on providing economic and energy incentives for North Korea, while China will be responsible for a group on the North’s denuclearization. Russia will head a group concerned with peace and...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 27, 2007

Joe DiTrani on the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework and N. Korea’s Uranium Program

[Update: Welcome Think Progress readers.  If you believe that our suspicions about highly-enriched uranium all  rest on slender  aluminum tubes, see also, and see also also.] Ambassador Joseph DiTrani, formerly a member of Chris Hill’s negotiating team and now the North Korea Mission Manager at the Directorate of National Intelligence, piped up in the Senate today when Sen. Jack Reed asked a fairly obvious question — what has changed since HEU was a deal-breaker in 2002?   His answer, though not earth-shaking,...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
February 26, 2007

Chronology of a Capitulation: Why Nothing Will Be Solved in 60 Days

Kyodo News has a very distressing report about just what the United States came to Beijing prepared to give up, and give up almost immediately: North Korea’s abandonment of nuclear weapons was stated in a first draft of an agreement document for the six-party talks held earlier this month, but was dropped in a second draft drawn up by the United States after the North Korean side rejected it, negotiation sources said Sunday. Given that North Korea giving up nuclear...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 23, 2007

The Administration’s North Korea Strategy: Pop Smoke

[Update:   A friend just sent me John O’Sullivan’s  must-read criticism of the deal on National Review Online (thanks!),  and it’s  an absolute direct hit.   O’Sullivan actually attributed Bush’s new policy to Jimmy Carter (ouch!).  Safe to say, conservatives pretty much all want  this deal  euthanized.   I could  swear I’d seen the Kipling reference before somewhere.] [Update 2:  More “Barrel of a Gun” spin from Pyongyang:  In another sense, North Korean authorities seem to be trying to re-integrate the disparity...
Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD