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Category: Six-Party Talks

December 1, 2007

Hill the Hawk? Not This Year.

A friend was kind enough to pass along five transcripts of Christopher Hill’s remarks to the press during his current trip to Japan and the Koreas. There’s too much interesting information in there to graf and the remarks aren’t long, so I’m just going to upload them in full and let you read for yourself. These are State’s own transcripts; I’ve appended the  text to the bottom of this post. The key point is that North Korea is going to...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
November 29, 2007

What is Condi Thinking?

It took the Annapolis Summit — not North Korea — to galavanize conservative suspicions about Secretary Rice and our State Department.  That part of the world doesn’t interest me much because I wrote it off as hopeless after visiting it in 1990 (I mean the Middle East, not  Annapolis).  My few days in Israel and a  Hamas-controlled village in  East Jerusalem have persuaded me that there isn’t going to be peace there until the Palestinians make the fundamental decision that...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
November 15, 2007

Kim Jong Il’s Moment of Truth, and Bush’s

Not off to a very encouraging start, are we?  Of North Korea’s intentions and attitudes, we already know plenty from past experience.  The real question is what our own government is willing to do for a few friendly headlines.  I think personalities in the State Department who would overlook inspection, verification, and proliferation to please their Chinese and South Korean friends  have the tiller firmly in their grasp.  Bush is worn  down from bleeding wounds to his ankles,  going through...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
October 29, 2007

There Is Such a Thing as ‘Good’ Engagement

If you’re reading this, you’re bearing with me despite the light blogging of late.  Thank you.  I make a habit of not talking about my work here, but suffice to say that it carries significant responsibilities that sometimes leave no time and energy for other things.  At times like these, when there is very little time left over, I owe that time to my family.  Thank you again for your understanding,  for continuing to stop by, and for your e-mails. ...
Categories Deprogramming/Six-Party Talks
October 14, 2007

NYT: It Was a Reactor

Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.  [N.Y. Times, David Sanger and Mark Mazzetti] Even among other journalists who cover this story and the White House, Sanger is well known for having good sources...
Categories Six-Party Talks
October 9, 2007

The Last Chance

Does this sound like a country that’s made the decision to give up its nuclear arsenal? The North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper ran a lengthy editorial to mark the anniversary, imploring the poverty-stricken population of 23 million to rally around Kim, the official Korean Central News Agency said. “Never forgettable are acclamations of October, 2006, when we shouted hurrah again and again at the top of our voices in admiration of General Kim Jong Il who unfolded an eternally clear...
Categories Six-Party Talks
October 7, 2007

Who Cares About Politicizing Intelligence Now?

Washington was plunged into sleepy apathy this week as ABC News reported that the  Bush Administration  ingored, then  failed to act on intelligence about  nuclear proliferation and potential terrorism that could have endangered  millions of lives.  The report claims that the Secretary of State and the President  received credible reports that North Korea transferred nuclear technology to Syria,  but suppressed the information  to save a troubled diplomatic deal, and even  sought to tip  the Syrians off.  The latest report follows...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
October 3, 2007

Define “All”

Update:   A reader was kind enough to send a copy of the latest six-party joint statement, which you can read here.   Some of the key langugage: 2. The DPRK agreed to provide a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs in accordance with the February 13 agreement by 31 December 2007. A deadline.  I like deadlines.  But  this adds no clarity  that nuclear “programs” means nuclear “weapons,” and nothing about inspection or verification beyond Yongbyon. 3. The...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 22, 2007

Sunday Times: Israelis Seized N. Korean ‘Nuclear Material’ in Syria

I wonder how Chris Hill is going to talk his way out of this one: Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem. The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say. They confirmed that samples taken from Syria...
Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
September 20, 2007

We must be smoking what they’re growing

North Korea was dropped from the U.S. list of countries producing illicit drugs, a sign of further relief of tensions between the two countries. “North Korea is not affecting the United States as much as the requirements on the list,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Christy McCampbell said on Sept. 17 in Washington, according to a transcript of her speech on the State Department Web site.  [Bloomberg] And that decision is based on what?  On  absolutely nothing but the interests...
Categories Appeasement/Axis of Evil/Drugs & N Korea/Six-Party Talks
September 13, 2007

Is North Korea Selling Nukes to Syria?

Update:   North Korea may be cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility in Syria, according to new intelligence the United States has gathered over the past six months, sources said. The evidence, said to come primarily from Israel, includes dramatic satellite imagery that led some U.S. officials to believe that the facility could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons. The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a...
Categories Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
September 2, 2007

What’s the Value of a North Korean Disclosure Anyway?

Update:   Woohoo!   They agreed to full disclosure again, for the second time in six months!   Thanks to the brilliant diplomacy  of our State Department, we can actually  bask in the afterglow of the same breakthrough twice a year!   It’s twice the  feelgood for the price!   At least, until someone leaks that we had to pay another price …. [Hill]  said he and Kim had discussed a range of issues in their two days of talks...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
August 31, 2007

Did North Korea Renege? Watch Chris Hill Not Say!

Two days ago,  I posted about a Tokyo Shimbun  report that  the North Koreans said they’d only include three sites around Yongbyon in their disclosure.  If true, that means the North Koreans have  renounced this deal, and it’s game over.  Also two days ago, Chris Hill held an on-the-record briefing at the State Department, and Chris Hill’s skill at schmoozing a mostly  admiring media while telling them (and us) almost nothing was a wonder to see.  There’s no money quote...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
August 30, 2007

State Dept. Won’t Remove N. Korea from Terror List … Yet

The chief U.S. envoy at North Korean nuclear talks said Wednesday the United States will make sure close ally Japan is satisfied before lifting North Korea from a U.S. list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorists. Christopher Hill acknowledged the North has raised the terror-list removal repeatedly as a crucial part of a February nuclear disarmament accord. But, he said, the United States is “not going to cup our eyes and pretend a country is not a state sponsor of...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
August 26, 2007

Did I Just Hear North Korea Renege Again?

A Japanese newspaper on Saturday said North Korea insisted in disarmament talks this month that it would only declare and disable three nuclear facilities — none of them with atomic weapons. All three sites are in the immediate vicinity of the nearly used-up Yongbyon reactor, which North Korea finally shut down (but never disabled) last month, several months after  the date it  had agreed to do so.   You can see  Google Earth images of some of those facilities  here. But...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 21, 2007

The Next Deadlock

The irony of North Korea calling another nation “fascist” can’t be appreciated by those who are missing that gene, confined  within North Korea, or both.  Maybe this is an f-bomb that could only be built  in a place where abductees are no more hostages than their captors.  It’s probable that the author’s irony  was completely unintentional —  that he was  oblivious to  what Earthlings would think when they read his words: The search [of Chongryon headquarters] was part of an...
Categories Abductions/Six-Party Talks/WMD
July 20, 2007

A License to Stall

If you read those breathless reports that North Korea was really, really  ready to fully denuclearize,  you can  catch your breath now:  “We had a big discussion about putting an overall deadline in,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, told reporters after talks concluded today. “We had a consensus. Since we were not very successful in meeting the date in the spring, we decided that we should have working groups before we come up with a...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks