Here is a short must read on North Korea and highly enriched uranium (Financial Times):
Discussions with former senior US government officials indicate that the intelligence community was unanimous in its 2002 assessment that North Korea had an active programme to acquire materials for enriching sufficient uranium to develop weapons. Where disagreements existed, they were over the extent of progress North Korea had made, or was likely to make, towards achieving a covert capability to produce uranium.
But pursuit of an HEU programme, regardless of progress, violates North Korea’s commitments to the 1994 “agreed framework” - in which North Korea first pledged to freeze its nuclear programme in return for energy assistance - the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and the 1992 North-South Korea de-nuclearisation accord.
I am all for creative negotiating, but there is only so much wiggle room the Norks can be given on HEU. I don’t care how far along the HEU part of North Korea’s nuclear program has gone, the program and all its components has to go. There is no creative way around this. If there is no progress on HEU, then we are back to step one; the sanctions stay and the aid dries up again.
While I am on the subject, I am more than a little tired of hearing that North Korea has a right to nuclear power. Their right to anything is not the issue. The issue is what rights they have to give up. If they want their begging bowl to be full of oil and other goodies, they have to give the nukes up. It is that simple.
That same principle should be in place with all dealings with the Kim Jong-il regime: If their overseas financial partners like Banco Delta Asia want to able to operate without getting barred from the US market, they need to get out of the counterfeiting business. If they want to get off the state sponsor of terror list, here is a guide.
The only folks keep North Korea (literally) in the dark are Kim Jong-il and his buddies.
3 Comments
This blog entry is a sermon to the converted.
The only problem in these negotiations is the passive irresponsibility of the South Korean side.
It is the same passive irresponsibility that has 3,000 ROK soldiers building toilets in the middle of the safest place in Iraq. The 3,000 ROK soldiers need to be protected by the Kurdistan Peshmerga. An army that can’t defend itself?
They always want others to grant them favors, but they refuse to do anything worthwhile to help others.
The South Koreans need to step up and and be responsible participants in the negotiations.
sqn,
Perhaps everyone who will read the post thinks the same way (although I doubt it), but I just felt the need to say that stuff… again.
There is a reason there are not that many posts on the nuclear negotiations at this blog. Almost all of the writers have here have become bored with writing the same kind of stuff over and over again.
We are dealing with politicans, governments, and the international community…
Of course there are a plenthora of ways around this. (And by that I mean with plenty of people willing to give NK the benefit of the doubt or what it takes to allow some to go around it.
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