Aknauta
03-09-2003, 05:16 PM
HoustonChronicle.com
March 7, 2003, 9:04PM
THE NORTH KOREA TRAP
U.S. shouldn't again fall for bilateral negotiations with Pyongyang
By HENRY A. KISSINGER
WHILE the nation is preparing itself for war with Iraq, a potentially even graver crisis is evolving on the Korean peninsula. The North Korean regime -- arguably among the most brutal and repressive in the world -- used the occasion of a visit to Pyongyang by the U.S. assistant secretary of state to inform him that it had built a uranium-enrichment plant, betraying an agreement of 1994 to freeze its nuclear program. Since that day last October, Pyongyang has renounced its membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty and evicted the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It has restarted the plutonium-reprocessing plant at Yongbyon and will within months be able to produce weapons-grade material for a score or more of plutonium weapons a year for its own arsenal and to transfer plutonium to other rogue states or to terrorist groups.
It has coupled these measures with demands for bilateral negotiations with the United States and the United States only. Overtures from the South Korean government have been rejected, and other states have been discouraged from proposing multilateral forums.
Link (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1809502)
March 7, 2003, 9:04PM
THE NORTH KOREA TRAP
U.S. shouldn't again fall for bilateral negotiations with Pyongyang
By HENRY A. KISSINGER
WHILE the nation is preparing itself for war with Iraq, a potentially even graver crisis is evolving on the Korean peninsula. The North Korean regime -- arguably among the most brutal and repressive in the world -- used the occasion of a visit to Pyongyang by the U.S. assistant secretary of state to inform him that it had built a uranium-enrichment plant, betraying an agreement of 1994 to freeze its nuclear program. Since that day last October, Pyongyang has renounced its membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty and evicted the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It has restarted the plutonium-reprocessing plant at Yongbyon and will within months be able to produce weapons-grade material for a score or more of plutonium weapons a year for its own arsenal and to transfer plutonium to other rogue states or to terrorist groups.
It has coupled these measures with demands for bilateral negotiations with the United States and the United States only. Overtures from the South Korean government have been rejected, and other states have been discouraged from proposing multilateral forums.
Link (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1809502)