North Korea's Nuclear Weapons

Discussion in 'Politics' started by SouthAmerica, Sep 19, 2005.

  1. .

    SouthAmerica: The more I think about this entire North Korean news that has transpired since yesterday about them giving up their nuclear weapons – I realize that It does not make sense to me even if the North Koreans were bluffing about having the nuclear weapons – the timing of the deal is completely off, how the deal was done in the eleventh hour – I am not sure if there is a real deal here, and so on….

    Right now the only reason for a change of policy from the North Koreans regarding their nuclear weapons would be if they were having a total economic meltdown and collapse – but if that was the case we would have known through the international media that there were thousands of North Koreans trying to get inside China to be able to survive the famine and the chaos.

    I have a gut feeling that the North Koreans actually do have the nuclear weapons that they claim they have, and they are not foolish enough to give them up - I don’t know who is playing games right now of let’s spin the news.

    I don’t understand why they would give them up so easily after all this time and when the Bush administration is in real trouble regarding the Iraq War and the events related to Hurricane Katrina.

    China would not press North Korea to give up the nuclear weapons at this time for many reasons. It would be more interesting to China to keep the dialogue going to show to the world how they were replacing United States power in that area of the world – and they were running the show. China had an incentive to keep the negotiations going as long as they could without a final solution from North Korea. And China would look even better if they brokered instead a merge between the two Koreas. That would show who is top dog in Asia.

    If they have the nuclear weapons why give them up right now? There are many advantages when your country it is armed with nuclear weapons including the fact that your country belongs to a very exclusive club. And if they have plans to merge with South Korea – the nuclear weapons would give the merged country a higher status in world politics.

    This entire affair related to North Korea giving up their nuclear weapons it does not make sense to me - Even a starving North Korea.

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    #21     Sep 20, 2005
  2. .

    SouthAmerica: Now, it is making sense again. The US and North Korea are back to square one. It was just a news spin and nothing else – regarding North Korea giving up their nuclear weapons.

    The North Koreans had to be very foolish to do such a thing.

    They have a lot more leverage today as a country armed with nuclear weapons than otherwise.

    Without the nuclear weapons they become just a country living in a world similar to the world of 60 years ago.


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    “North Korea accuses U.S. of plotting nuclear attack”
    Mainichi Daily News – September 21, 2005

    SEOUL -- North Korea accused the United States on Wednesday of using international talks on the communist country's nuclear program "to disarm and crush it to death with nuclear weapons" two days after a landmark agreement that was expected to ease tensions.

    "The ulterior intention of the United States talking about resolving the nuclear issue under the signboard of the six-party talks is as clear as daylight," the North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. "In a word, it intends to disarm and crush us to death with nuclear weapons."

    North Korea has in the past accused Washington of plotting to attack it with nuclear weapons. The latest comments come just two days after it agreed in the six-nation talks in Beijing to give up its nuclear programs in return for economic aid and security assurances.


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    #22     Sep 21, 2005
  3. .

    October 25, 2005

    SouthAmerica: Today American foreign policy it is like a comedy – the only thing that anyone with some common sense can do: it is to laugh about it.

    You can’t take this group of people seriously. They are a bunch of jokers.

    I saw Bill Richardson on CNN today saying how the North Koreans changed their minds and how they are going to go back and meet again with China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and US - regarding North Korea’s nuclear disarmament. He also said that he convinced the North Koreans to let some non-profit organizations return their people to North Korea - to spy on them.

    In the same day, the New York Times has an article saying that the US is asking a number of countries to close their airspace to North Korean airplanes. – Just a friendly gesture from the US to get on the good side of the North Koreans.

    And below is an article on a Chinese newspaper quoting Condi Rice and her usual Blah, blah, blah.

    Today we have the most incompetent bunch of people in key positions of the US government.

    I guess the North Koreans will have to stall this group of people for another 3 years, until we have new presidential elections in the US – and hopefully we get a better quality of people in charge of US government domestic and international affairs.

    Until then, good luck to the North Koreans. (At least the Chinese government knows what is going on, and they also will not take the Americans too seriously until the US gets a new government – with competent people.)


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    China Daily
    “Rice warns North Korea on new nuclear demands”
    (AP) Associated Press 2005-10-25

    US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Monday that North Korea should not bring any new demands to international disarmament talks and said the country's claim to a nuclear power reactor "remains an abstraction."

    North Korea agreed last month to abandon its nuclear weapons program and dismantle weapons, but details of the deal are still unclear. North Korea appeared to back away from some pledges in the days after the deal was signed.

    The next talks, which involve China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia and the United States, are scheduled for November, but no date has been set.

    "I assume they are going to come back. If they come back it's without preconditions, because that's the only basis on which the talks will be restarted," Rice told reporters en route to a brief diplomatic visit to Canada.
    One sticking point is Pyongyang's demand that in exchange for giving up its nuclear program it is provided with a light-water nuclear reactor to meet its dire energy needs. Light-water reactors are believed to be less easily diverted for weapons use.

    The United States, however, says this issue should be tackled only after Pyongyang has verifiably dismantled its weapons efforts.

    "The light water reactor issue continues to be an abstraction," Rice said.

    Last week, former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson said North Korea is committed to unconditionally resuming talks on its atomic weapons program and returning to the international nuclear nonproliferation pact.

    Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, was in Pyongyang this week at the invitation of the government, said the North had also pledged to allow outside oversight of its disarmament.


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    #23     Oct 25, 2005
  4. .

    April 26, 2006

    SouthAmerica: Yesterday the Financial Times (UK) had a sensible article about North Korea and its Nukes – and the merge of the two Koreas that it is already in the first stage.

    The article said what I have been saying all along the 2 Koreas are already in the first stage of reunification – with or without the US blessings.

    The Koreans are ready to merge their country into one. And they will do that one step at the time until the deal is complete.

    The people of both Koreas know that a unified Korea armed with nuclear weapons will have a lot more prestige and clout around the world than a merged Korea – WITHOUT NUKES.

    The Chinese are not worried about the Korean nukes because they are in the same team.

    In the same way that the United States is not afraid of the nuclear weapons from France, England and the other US allies.

    I am 100 percent for them to make peace and unify the 2 Koreas into a new merged happy family.

    Go for!!!!!!

    Here are some quotes from that article published by the Financial Times of London:


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    “Normality in North Korea can defuse the nuclear risk”
    By Victor Mallet
    Published: April 25 2006
    Financial Times – UK


    … Amid the rhetoric and angst over Iran (which is years away from manufacturing a nuclear bomb and denies it wants to), North Korea (which boasts of its nuclear deterrent) is quietly getting away with it.

    … In the words of Mr Armitage, China is "enormously investing" in North Korea, while the two halves of Korea are engaged in a slow, de facto process of unification. In Washington last week, Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, gave only token support to the drive to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.

    As for South Korea - supposedly a key US ally - a recent opinion poll showed that nearly half the country's young voters would side with the North if the US attacked Pyongyang's nuclear facilities. The South Korean government and the private sector are vigorously promoting economic exchanges across the demilitarised zone….


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    #24     Apr 26, 2006
  5. .

    May 18, 2006

    SouthAmerica: Here is another sign that the two Koreas are getting ready to merge into one country.

    I know some South Koreans and they tell me that the people in South Korea want the two Koreas to merge as soon as possible.


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    “North-South Korea plan first train run in 55 years”
    Reporting by Kim Yeon-hee and Jon Herskovitz
    REUTERS - Sat May 13, 2006

    SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea plan to send the first trains across their heavily fortified border in 55 years when they test rail links later this month, the South's Unification Ministry said on Saturday.

    South Korea is keen for trains to cross the border. There are two sets of tracks that run from the South and into North Korea, but South Korean officials said the North's powerful military has been reluctant to sign off on a plan for through trains.

    Officials from the two Koreas this week held their 12th round of talks on the rail links in the North Korean border city of Kaesong. The talks ended early on Saturday.

    They agreed to have test runs that will cover a small length of track on rail links on the east and west coasts of the peninsula, the two said in a statement released by the ministry.

    "(The South) agreed to provide necessary equipment to help the North complete the final stage of railway construction," the statement said. The two will work out final details of the test runs in the coming days, the statement said.

    South Korea has provided most of the capital and material to link the two Koreas by rail.

    The western rail link would help in the shipment of goods in and out of an industrial park in Kaesong where South Korean companies produce goods at factories using cheap North Korean labour and land.

    The eastern rail link would help in the tourism trade. A Hyundai group affiliate that runs the Kaesong industrial park also runs a mountain resort in North Korea on the east coast that millions of South Koreans have visited.

    South and North Korean generals, who have had few meetings in the past, will hold talks next week on the measures they will use in monitoring rail traffic across the Cold War's last frontier.


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    #25     May 19, 2006
  6. .

    May 18, 2006

    SouthAmerica: North Korea has become the poster country in the world as a model of how the United States changed its tune from a “Lion’s roar to a Cat’s miau” in a very short period of time.

    What was the reason for such a difference?

    Nuclear weapons – just a half dozen nukes did the trick.

    I have been writing for a couple years now that the two Koreas should merge into a country. And I will not be surprised if that will come to past in the near future.

    In my opinion, what the two Koreas should do immediately is announce their plan for the coming merge.

    The North Koreans bring to the table nuclear weapons – which will place the merged Korea among a very select number of countries with nuclear weapons capabilities. That would give the new Korea more clout than if they gave up their nukes. The nukes would place them among the elite countries that have a special status because they have nuclear weapons.

    South Korea has the know-how and the financial strength for the new Korea to continue its spectacular economic performance.

    By announcing that the two Koreas have started the process of merging the two pieces – they would be sending a strong message to the world that they don’t need prior authorization from any other country to follow up with their merger plans. The Korean people of the North and South are the ones deciding on their future and destiny and not some outside country or master.



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    “U.S. Said to Weigh a New Approach on North Korea”
    By DAVID E. SANGER
    Published: May 18, 2006
    The New York Times

    WASHINGTON, May 17 — 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.

    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.

    With the war in Iraq and the nuclear dispute with Iran as distractions, many top officials have all but given up hope that North Korea's government will either disarm or collapse during Mr. Bush's remaining time in office.

    Increasingly, they blame two of Mr. Bush's negotiating partners, South Korea and China, which have poured aid into North Korea even while the United States has tried to cut off its major sources of revenue.

    In his first term, Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he would never "tolerate" a nuclear North Korea. Now he rarely discusses the country's suspected weapons. Instead, he has met in the Oval Office with escapees from the country and used the events to discuss North Korea's prison camps and the suffering of its people.

    Mr. Bush has also been under subtle pressure to change the first-term talk of speeding change of government. "Focusing on regime change as the road to denuclearization confuses the issue," former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger wrote in a lengthy op-ed article that appeared in The Washington Post on Tuesday. Noting that the negotiations have been conducted by Christopher R. Hill, a seasoned diplomat who played a major role in the Dayton peace accords, which halted the civil war in Bosnia, he said, "Periodic engagement at a higher level is needed."

    A classified National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea, which was circulated among senior officials earlier this year, concluded that the North had probably fabricated the fuel for more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of Mr. Bush's administration and was continuing to produce roughly a bomb's worth of new plutonium each year. But in a show of caution after the discovery of intelligence flaws in Iraq, the assessment left unclear whether North Korea had actually turned that fuel into weapons.

    With the six-nation negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program appearing to go nowhere, the drive for a broader strategy was propelled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and one of her top aides, Philip D. Zelikow, who drafted two papers describing the new approach.

    Those papers touched off what one senior official called "a blizzard of debate" over the next steps that eventually included Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been widely described by current and former officials as leading the drive in Mr. Bush's first term to make sure the North Korean government received no concessions from the United States until all of its weapons and weapons sites were taken apart. It is unclear where Mr. Cheney stands on the new approach that emerged from the State Department.

    Now, said one official who has participated in the recent internal debate, "I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult."

    The official added, "So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war" that has existed, at least on paper, for 53 years. "It may be another way to get there."

    An agreement that was signed in September by North Korea and the five other nations involved in the talks — the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia — commits the country to give up its weapons and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "at an early date" but leaves completely unclear what would have to come first: disarmament or a series of steps that would aid North Korea.

    It also included a sentence that paves the way for the initiative recommended to Mr. Bush, declaring that "the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum." But it does not specify what steps North Korea would have to take first.

    As described by administration officials, none of whom would speak on the record about deliberations inside the White House, Mr. Bush's aides envision starting negotiations over a formal peace treaty that would include the original signatories of the armistice — China, North Korea and the United States, which signed on behalf of the United Nations. They would also add South Korea, now the world's 11th-largest economy, which declined to sign the original armistice.

    Japan, Korea's colonial ruler in the first half of the 20th century, would be excluded, as would Russia.

    A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment on any internal deliberations on North Korea policy and referred all questions to the State Department, which has handled the negotiations with the North. The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, declined to discuss the recommendations made to Mr. Bush and said, "The most important decision is with North Korea — and that is the strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program."

    "They signed a joint statement," he added, "but they have yet to demonstrate that they have made a decision to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs."

    In justifying its refusal to return to talks, North Korea has complained bitterly about the financial sanctions imposed by the United States, which have been aimed at closing down the North's banking activities in Macao and elsewhere in Asia. The United States has described those steps as "defensive measures" intended to stop the country from counterfeiting American currency and exporting drugs and missiles.

    Even if peace treaty talks started, officials insisted, those sanctions would continue. A month ago, Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told a small audience of foreign policy experts that the sanctions were "the first thing we have done that has gotten their attention," several participants in the meeting said.

    Some intelligence officials say they believe the protests may have arisen in part because they affected a secretive operation in North Korea called Unit 39 that finances the personal activities of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, providing the money he spends for his entertainment and to win the loyalty of others in the leadership.


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    #26     May 19, 2006
  7. .

    May 18, 2006

    SouthAmerica: According to this article published on a South Korean newspaper –
    North Korea has been “eating the United States for breakfast” since the Bush administration took over in January 2001.

    The North Koreans are taking the Bush administration to beginner’s school – a special class for amateurs and incompetent people.


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    “Washington Takes Negotiating Lessons from North Korea”
    By Oh Young-hwan, Deputy Political Editor
    South Korea - May 17, 2006

    North Korea has a well-established reputation for its negotiation skills. Brinksmanship is one of Pyongyang's signature tactics. It will often elevate the tension to the maximum, and then lay down an ultimatum.

    Another North Korean favorite is the salami tactic. The name comes from thinly sliced Italian sausage, and refers to breaking down an agenda into thin slices, then taking one slice at a time until they have the whole salami.

    North Korean negotiators are also known for their eloquence, quoting various adages, and all of them seem to have the guts to walk out of a meeting any time.

    Even their veteran South Korean counterparts are wary of dealing with them. So it's only natural that Washington officials, who made their first contact with high-ranking North Korean officials in 1992, are disgusted by these tactics and are studying them closely.

    Mitchell B. Reiss, former director of policy planning at the Department of State, is one of them. In January 2003, he put forth nine lessons for negotiating with North Korea. This essay came out immediately after North Korea's nuclear project emerged, and just when Washington's policy needed direction.

    Lesson #1: Be humble. We have a hard time understanding how this insignificant third-world backwater, the last outpost of the Cold War, can consistently thwart the will of the world's only superpower.

    Lesson #2: You can do business with North Korea.

    Lesson #3: But it's never easy. The North Koreans are very experienced, very patient negotiators.

    Lesson #4: Distrust and verify.

    Lesson #5: In certain situations, Washington's discussions with North Korea can provide useful political cover for South Korea and Japan to engage with North Korea.

    Lesson # 6: The range of issues requires senior level officials with broad authority.

    Lesson # 7: We need to treat North Korea as it is, not as we would like it to be.

    Lesson #8: The United States must always act in concert with close allies such as South Korea and Japan.

    Lesson #9: If you do not have a policy toward North Korea, North Korea will determine your policy for you.

    The six-party talks are at a crossroads. These previous nine lessons might be the voice of moderates.

    Let me add Lesson #10. Without a hidden contact, you will never succeed. The Libya situation was resolved through backdoor negotiation.


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    #27     May 19, 2006
  8. .

    May 19, 2006

    SouthAmerica:

    Note: In case you are from Korea or some other country - I used on above posting a term or an idiom of the English language as follows:

    “To eat someone for breakfast” = to deal with someone easily and completely.


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    #28     May 19, 2006
  9. SA you have been posting all this time in the wrong website. !!

    This is the elite"trader" website, where the best of free market and pure capitalism come together.

    All your postings belong in the "welfare"bitches website.

    thought you should know.....:)
     
    #29     May 19, 2006
  10. jem

    jem

    Oh yes they are eating George Bush for breakfast. Did you not read the state dept memo. Negotiations provide cover for South Korea and Japan. Duh. We could have ripped them a new one had we not been working on behalf of others.

    And if you are going to quote lesson 1 realize, if we do not wish to use military power and eskimo in an igloo could ignore us as well.
     
    #30     May 19, 2006