Yonhap quotes Radio Free Asia as saying that the US and North Korea have reached a deal in the two six party talks. I don’t have years of diplomatic training, which might be the reason why the purported deal strikes me as just plain stupid:
Under the secret agreement, reached at a meeting of the top nuclear envoys of the two countries in Singapore early this week, the U.S. will make a declaration of North Korea’s alleged uranium enrichment program and nuclear cooperation with Syria on behalf of Pyongyang, Radio Free Asia reported on its Web site, citing “multiple diplomatic sources” in Washington.
In return, the agreement calls for North Korea to “acknowledge” the U.S. concern over the two issues, which have been key sticking points at the six-nation disarmament talks, and not to “challenge the facts,” the radio station said.
North Korea and the U.S. agreed to exchange a secret memorandum of understanding on the agreement, it said.
Perhaps my memory is a bit fuzzy on this, but didn’t the whole Agreed Framework 2.0* mess start with North Korea admitting behind closed doors to having a uranium program but denying it publicly? How is anyone going to be able to verify the dismantling of a program that Pyongyang would be allowed to deny exists?
Perhaps folks cleverer than I have already figured that one out.
Condi Rice denies that the deal is done, but the State Department has has been known to be a little creative with the truth on this matter so I guess we will have to wait until the formalities in Beijing are completed before we can know who is right.
*I think that term is trademarked, but I am going to use it anyhow.
6 Comments
So let me get this straight. After all that time condemning South Korean treachery against making deals with the unreliable NK and accusing S.Koreans of being anti Americans for smoozing up with the enemy, the US turns around and makes their own deal with the devil - just as a new hard line S.Korean government comes to power.
What happened to all the moral outrage of not negotiating with terrorists?
Well, a certain outgoing Administration desperately needs a “foreign policy victory” within this year, just so that historians will not declare their entire eight years of international dealings as absolute and total disastrous failure and blunder — and so any deal with any bad-guys will do. A rough and unfortunate situation… but in the triage, the interests of South Korea and its new administration can be sacrificed towards this greater goal of “saving face American-style”.
I hereby grant you a 99-year license to the use of “Agreed Framework 2.0.”
Thanks.
Just letting the Koreans feel a little isolated and experience a bit of their “Where the Sun Don’t Shine Policy.” Any agreement will be worthless anyway as the North has a unique way of always breaking them.
FT today: