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Category: Diplomacy

February 22, 2007

Richardson on David Albright: Put Me Down for “C”

Update:   Albright has published  his views here  in slightly more detail, and I’m even less persuaded than I was before.  Albright completely mischaracterizes the HEU evidence by ingoring  evidence he can’t refute (North Korea’s admissions, Musharraf’s admissions, Libya) and arguing as if all of our  evidence consisted of a receipt for  aluminum tubes we’d found in A.Q. Khan’s lint filter.   The key point  about aluminum tubes  is that they’re  used to make gas centrifuges to enrich uranium.  I’ve never...
Categories Appeasement/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 21, 2007

‘Paying the Clown’

[Corrected, Updated]   Harvard Professor Sung Yoon Lee  dissects the North Korea sellout  in the Daily NK and manages to say in one paragraph, with crisp eloquence, what it’s taken me about four posts to say less clearly. Energy, food, economic aid, and legitimacy are a necessary condition to the North Korean regime’s long-term survival, for the quintessential criminal regime of Kim Jong Il–despite its claims of juche (self-sufficiency)–is unable to function over the long-term without aid from abroad. At...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 21, 2007

The Two (South) Koreas

I have concluded that there must be some South Korean law against holding cabinet meetings. South Korea’s point man on North Korea said Wednesday that there is no evidence to support reports that North Korea may have a uranium-enrichment program. “We do not have any information on whether North Korea is carrying out a concrete plan to run a uranium-enrichment program,” Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said at a meeting of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and trade.  [Yonhap] National...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 20, 2007

A Rumble at Kouvola

Fred Frey International brings us the story from this  remote Finnish border post, which  was recently the scene of two North Koreans going a bit overboard in protecting the diplomatic pouch they were carrying.  They weren’t carrying diplomatic passports, but the Finns were ultimately willing to overlook that.  None of this would have happened if the North Koreans had just shown their tickets. I wonder what was in the pouch…. Update:   See also Antti’s great blog with the unpronounceable...
Categories Diplomacy/Europe/WTF?
February 19, 2007

It’s Time for Jay Lefkowitz to Resign

I recently wrote a piece for publication on North Korea’s finances, the rumors of the then-prospective deal with North Korea,  and how to increase the pressure so that we could get a truly verifiable dismantlement of their nuclear program and a real and fundamental movement toward transparency.   If no favorable agreement could be achieved,  our financial strategy  showed real promise in  collapsing  the regime’s palace economy, and maybe even the regime  itself, something for which my aspiration is no secret. ...
Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
February 17, 2007

Except for the Checks Being Written Out to ‘Herr A. Hitler,’ and The Dachau Industrial Park, Yes

Paying off Kim Jong Il is just like the Marshall Plan, says Roh. “There is frequent criticism that we are pouring out aid to the North,” Mr. Roh told South Korean residents in Italy. “After the war, the United States had several plans and investments, and among those the most efficient was the Marshall Plan. He noted the great benefits Washington had reaped from its investments: “Inter-Korean relations are being worked out, and we have the Kaesong Industrial Complex, but...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement
February 15, 2007

Escape from Munich

[Update:    The Washington Post declares a  conservative revolt against the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework.  E-mailing another activist today, I noted the irony that after years of being on President Bush’s side and getting no media traction, we’re far more likely to attract media attention now that we oppose his new policy.  Just watch.  This will be  a fascinating experiment in media behavior.] [Update 2:   More at MSNBC.  The Administration is now  furiously “clarifying” that it will  interpret the terms strictly, which...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized
February 14, 2007

Bush’s Korea Sellout Rolls On

[Update:   Not Washington, but San Francisco, to meet with (presumably friendly) NGO’s,  and New York, to meet Chris Hill for bilateral talks.  I wonder if they mean this NGO, or this one.  We may soon test the old adage that all publicity is good publicity.] The chief nuclear negotiators of North Korea and the United States are planning to visit each other’s capital soon, a diplomatic source in Seoul was quoted as saying in a South Korean news report...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 13, 2007

The Not-Quite-Agreed Framework

[Originally, “Hill:  We Have a Deal.”] [Update:   I’ve pasted the full text of this “agreement” onto the bottom of this post.  Thanks to a reader.] Uh oh. The U.S. envoy to talks on nuclear program said Tuesday that a tentative agreement had been reached on initial moves for the communist nation’s disarmament. “I’m encouraged by this that we were able to take a step forward on the denuclearization issue,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said. He declined to...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 11, 2007

Curb Your Enthusiasm

See if you can spot any patterns here.  Let’s begin on a very high note: McClatchy News, Feb. 7:   The U.S. envoy to international talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis said Thursday that he was optimistic negotiators were nearing a breakthrough. Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Feb. 7,  Headline:   North Korea:  A Breakthrough at hand as talks resume today?  [OFK note:  at least they didn’t say “peace is at hand.”] NY Times, Feb. 7:   The long-stalled six-way talks on...
Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 9, 2007

Negotiating With Terror

I normally don’t really give a rat’s ass what al-Qaeda says in its videotapes, but this does seem more than mildly newsworthy: And in yet another gambit that smacks of desperation, [al-Qaeda in Iraq leader  Abu Omar] al-Baghdadi tries to rile up the French and the Chinese against American global hegemony, and addresses those nations as “the freemen of the world.” Not only that, but he adopts a scolding tone with North Korea, essentially invoking the “sharing is caring” line,...
Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
February 7, 2007

Why Is North Korea Even in the United Nations?

Claudia Rosett asks some very relevant questions about North Koreans, who are very likely regime intelligence assets, being given the U.N. equivalent of civil service examinations.  Successful completion of those examination would bring them into the General Secretariat.  I wonder what unsuccessful completion of those examinations would bring.  But I digress. I suppose that spying on the U.N. would not make North Korea unique, but  giving the world’s most  tyrannical  and belligerent nation  a key to  the Secretariat … now...
Categories "United" Nations
February 5, 2007

Wobble Watch: Kaesong

In a one-hour meeting with Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said that while it is unrealistic to recognize the goods made in the border city of Kaesong as South Korean, there is room left to negotiate within the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries, Unification Ministry officials said. “Lee stressed that U.S. recognition of the goods produced in Kaesong as South Korean will contribute to bringing about a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula....
Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics
February 4, 2007

Wobble Watch

“Since North Korea conducted a nuclear test, it no longer has the right to the peaceful use of nuclear power,” said the official closely involved in six-nation nuclear disarmament talks, speaking on condition that he not be identified. “It is impossible, and illegal according to international laws, to negotiate nuclear cooperation with a country that does not have the right” to peacefully use nuclear power, he said. It is not wobbly.  Moreover, and remarkably, this statement came from “a senior...
Categories Six-Party Talks
January 30, 2007

Wobble Watch

President George Bush has told the Treasury Department, which has been handling financial sanctions regarding North Korea, to cooperate with the State Department regarding the six-party talks, sources in Washington said.  Nevertheless, the cooperation comes with a catch. Washington has said the Treasury Department should cooperate only when Pyongyang promises at the next round of the six-party talks to take measures to “disable” its Yongbyon nuclear reactor.  [link] Later, the article specifies that “disable” means something irreversible that falls short...
Categories Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks
January 29, 2007

Deceptive Headline Watch: Yonhap

You don’t get self-fisking journalism very often, but here’s one that just falls off the bone like an overcooked roast (mmm, roooast).  Here’s the headline: U.S. must choose between sanctioning N.K. and compromising for denuclearization: report Well, what are we supposed to take from that, I wonder?  It could only be that inexplicable American obsession with people counterfeiting its currency that’s preventing us from denuclearizing North Korea.Until you read the actual quote, which says: “Currently the (George W.) Bush administration...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/WMD