- America is refocusing its North Korea policies to concentrate
on blocking the export of nuclear weapons materials by Pyongyang - a tacit
admission that Washington can realistically do little to prevent their
manufacture.
-
- The shift in position, which emerged after talks between
President George Bush and John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, in
Texas at the weekend, came as the US and the secretive Communist state
jockeyed over a deal to shut down the North's clandestine weapons programmes.
-
- Talks last month in Beijing ended inconclusively after
Pyongyang demanded massive economic aid and a written security guarantee
from Washington in return for scrapping its nuclear activities. Yesterday
the North demanded a response to the "bold proposal" it outlined
to James Kelly, the chief State Department negotiator to Korea. US officials
said Pyongyang told Mr Kelly that it possessed nuclear weapons and threatened
to use or export them if Washington did not make concessions.
-
- America now seems to be acknowledging it has no way of
establishing the size of any Korean arsenal. The assumption has long been
that the North possessed one or two devices, using the plutonium-based
technology that was shut down under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration.
But if Pyongyang's claims are true, that it has already reprocessed enough
spent fuel rods to make half a dozen weapons more, the danger would be
much greater.
-
- North Korea has long been identified by arms control
groups as the world's greatest proliferation threat: indeed North Korean
missile technology almost certainly gave Pakistan the delivery system for
its nuclear deterrent, which it tested last year.
-
- Those fears resonate even louder here after the trauma
of 11 September 2001.
-
- The greatest worry of the Bush administration is not
that Pyongyang will start another war on the Korean peninsula, thus entering
direct conflict with America, but that it would sell its technology and
weapons material to outlaw states or to terrorist groups such as al-Qa'ida,
in return for hard currency.
-
- The new line from Washington suggests that the Bush administration
is now ready to impose a strict embargo to quarantine the North - or even
take military action - if it believes weapons technology is being sold
abroad by Kim Jong Il's regime.
-
- * A Pakistani Foreign Ministry official said yesterday
that the country was ready to eliminate its nuclear weapons, if India did
the same. The Kashmir question had to be settled first. Aziz Ahmed Khan
said: "If India is ready to de-nuclearise, we would be very happy
to de-nuclearise."
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=403574
-
-
-
- Comment
-
- Kathy Fisher
- 5-6-3
-
- Translation: We are not about to kick any one's ass
who just might be
- able to kick ours back. Besides, there's nothing we
want from North Korea,
- and, if you really must know, we're only taking orders
from Israel these days.
- So, whether N Korea has 100 or 300 nukes pointed in our
direction, hey man,
- it's only gonna take one to ruin our day. So, we might
as well chill out.
|
