October 23, 2002

N Korea eager to bargain with US

North Korea yesterday said it wanted talks with the US about its nuclear weapons programme but only if Washington softened its hostile stance.["hostile?" Bud, we won't want to send you flowers when you tell us you have nukes! J.T.]

The comments signalled North Korea's desire to use its nuclear capabilities as a bargaining tool in negotiations with the US. However, James Kelly, US undersecretary of state, said there would be no talks until North Korea "verifiably" scrapped its weapons programme.

Washington has warned there will be "no replay" of 1994, when the US offered billions of dollars of energy aid in return for North Korea halting weapons development. North Korea's stance means it remains on a collision course with Washington over the secret uranium enrichment programme that the US said it admitted to during talks earlier this month.
[...]
Paik Jin-hyun, professor of international relations at Seoul National University, said the North was using nuclear weapons to "blackmail" the US into supporting its crumbling economy.

"North Korea seems to misunderstand the nature of the Bush administration," Mr Paik said. "What may have worked with [President Bill] Clinton will not work with [President George W.] Bush. [Praise Jesus!--Jen] Trying to use nuclear weapons to blackmail this US government. .. is the worst possible tactic."

Debate continued yesterday in the Bush administration and between Washington and its Asian allies about how to tackle North Korea. Colin Powell, US secretary of state, said Pyongyang's violation of its pledge to halt weapons development meant the 1994 deal - known as the Agreed Framework - was dead.

However, Washington said no decision had been made about whether to scrap the energy aid that the US and its allies provide to North Korea as part of the deal.
The US supplies 500,000 tons of fuel oil to energy-starved North Korea each year and is building a $5bn nuclear power station in the communist state, with help from South Korea, Japan and the European Union.

Some in the US administration want aid suspended but South Korea is reluctant to scrap the programme.

Withdrawal of aid would worsen the already chronic electricity shortages inside North Korea and risk seeing the economy collapse...

...and perhaps the evil régime behind it, too, one hopes.
Of this 1994 deal for fuel oil, food aid and the nuclear power station, and the concurrent "Sunshine Policy" adopted therefrom by South Korea, David Warren remarked in his column "Armed and Dangerous" :

The "Sunshine Policy" itself did not do such terrible damage to South Korean interests, it rather built upon the damage that was done early in the Clinton administration by the Carter-inspired and brokered opening to the North. What the West did, with growing South Korean co-operation, was feed and sustain the crazy regime that now plausibly threatens the lives of every Korean and Japanese, with weapons it did not formerly have. A regime which was on its last legs a decade ago, having lost its Soviet sponsor and being in the course of losing its Chinese sponsor, too.

"We" -- well, Messrs. Carter and Clinton -- saved them, with huge infusions of foreign aid and even improved nuclear technology, in the incredible belief that a country whose people were being starved to support a huge army, aggressively deployed, was somehow in need of nuclear energy. (A mountainous country which, incidentally, has substantial unexploited hydro potential.)

Yikes! Now, WHICH President is a "moron," "not very bright," "maladroit at foreign policy?" George W. Bush? NO, no, no. William Jefferson Blythe Klinton.
And the USA simply MUST go back to the drawing board on this "foreign aid" deal, especially when it involves a régime that we have very good reason to believe is despotic, tyrannical, and murderous....
This fiasco with North Korea marks the third time in a year that we've faced a War with a country we've given millions to in aid: first Afghanistan, then Iraq, now North Korea....
This "aid" thing is not working out. Big Time.
While our "motives" are the best--feed the hungry and alleviate the suffering of a country whose own leader is starving them through his "policies"--evidence has shown that not only have these criminal rulers continued to amass WsMD, even though we made granting of the aid conditional on their disarmament, verifiable inspections and improvements of human rights for their citizens, but the suffering and oppression hasn't been ameliorated one bit by our aid and leniency.
Worse still, by getting such aid from America, the tyrants in these countries have been relieved of the duty of feeding their own peoples and have used their surplus cash and capital to buy arms, torture chambers, military uniforms and guillotines.
Will we ever learn? Or will we continue to reward nation-states for bad behavior?
President Bush and Conservatives in general are very big on RESPONSIBILITY.
This should go for nation-states as well as individuals.
It's past time to practice what we preach.
I would like to see the Parent Superpower, the U.S.A., stop enabling the destructive, addicted, acting-out Children Countries of the world!
It's time these countries whose governments are based on despotism and dictatorship experienced the consequences of their bad choices and malefactions.
Maybe if that were the case, we wouldn't see a reappearance of an "axis of evil" anytime soon...and we certainly wouldn't be faced with having to make a pre-emptive military strike to effect "regime change" because these despots would, of necessity, make food, jobs, and justice their first priority and not missiles, prisons and smallpox.