Interesting On North Korea

[Annie]

Oh so many links to be found at the site about one rod of the axis of evil:

http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=1104

5/18/2006
NT Times: US to talk with North Korea

My first thought when I read the headline on Drudge “Bush team wants new peace talks with North Korea”: oh no, here we go again with another fruitless round of Pyongyang nuclear yoyo. My second thought: is this China’s diplomatic price for letting the UN or a western coalition tackle Iran? The NY Times headline was more informative: “U.S. Said to Weigh a New Approach on North Korea”.

Here’s a column from last year on the six-nation negotiations–and a second one from September 2005. I nicknamed the US and Japanese strategy to squeeze the nukes out of NoKo the “python strategy” three years ago (May 2003). China never permitted a “python embargo.” However, China has kept Kim Jong Il’s regime on a tether, supplying just enough oil and just enough food.

But back to today’s Times article… The NY Times reports:

President Bush’s top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country’s nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.

Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.

North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.

For several years after he first took office, Mr. Bush vowed not to end North Korea’s economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantlement took place. Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.
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The article then mentions Iran:

The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration’s discussions about what to do next said, “There is a sense that they can’t leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become — a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure.”

But it is far from clear that North Korea would engage in any new discussions, especially if they included talk of political change, human rights, terrorism and an opening of the country, topics that the Bush administration has insisted would have to be part of any comprehensive discussions with North Korea.
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Libya’s Qadaffi coughed up his WMD program. Diplomacy and military action convinced the Colonel to cash in his nuclear program and a remarkably well developed chemical weapon program (though, fortunately the Libyans never successfully produced a binary nerve agent artillery round or bomb).

A key graf in Judy Miller’s Wall St Journal report on Qadaffi:

While analysts continue to debate his motivation, evidence suggests that a mix of intelligence, diplomacy and the use of force in Iraq helped persuade him that the weapons he had pursued since he came to power, and on which he had secretly spent $300 million ($100 million on nuclear equipment and material alone), made him more, not less, vulnerable​

Trade and investment don’t stop war, but they certainly make the trader and investor think twice and thrice before using force. China knows North Korea is bad for business. A nuclear device destroying parts of Seoul or Tokyo (candidate targets for a North Korean nuclear attack) would damage the world’s economy –and that means severe damage to China’s economy.

We’ll have to see what “the Bush team” has in mind, but Beijing has always been key to peacefully resolving the problem posed by North Korea.

 

[dilloduck]

Oh so many links to be found at the site about one rod of the axis of evil:

http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=1104

Well I hope they solve it soon--I don't like the idea of a big missle aimed at us by a crazy Korean.