No Respect for the U.S. from North Korea

The New Year is here, and to no one's surprise, North Korea ignored its deadline for producing a report on its facilities, in an agreement to shut down nuclear operations. With all attention focused on riots in Kenya over a stolen election and in Pakistan over the assassination of the candidate most likely to upset Musharraf's rule, you can be sure that our occupied White House is going to let it go for now. As I predicted earlier this year, our status is back to Cold War levels.

The great successes Condi Rice was touting just weeks ago are exactly what all the administration's posturings have amounted to - a sham.

As North Korea misses a key deadline to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, Korea expert Aidan Foster-Carter explains why Pyongyang's prevarication has not provoked a stronger reaction.

Two months ago, hitherto comatose six-nation talks - both Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia - on the North Korean nuclear issue suddenly sprang to life.

A joint statement on 13 February created five separate working groups on various aspects, including more broadly towards diplomatic relations between North Korea and both the US and Japan.

Better yet, a previously on-off process (often more off than on) suddenly gave itself tight deadlines. The working groups were each to meet within a month, and duly did.

Above all North Korea committed to "shut down and seal for... eventual abandonment" its main nuclear site at Yongbyon within 60 days, i.e. by 14 April. Significantly, North Korea's own news agency called this closure a "temporary suspension".

In return, Pyongyang was promised aid equivalent to 50,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO), with a further 950,000 tons to follow once all its nuclear activities were fully declared and disabled.

Sceptics who doubted if Kim Jong-il would keep his word now feel vindicated. The date of 14 April came and went with no sign of Yongbyon being shuttered.

Yet US and other reaction was scarcely stronger than mild dismay and cajoling.

Washington's chief negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, merely accused North Korea of acting "lethargically" and warned that "[waiting] another month is not in my constitution".
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North Korea is on most counts a failed state. But it has the bomb, and Kim Jong-il can keep the world's sole superpower waiting while he collects his ill-gotten gains, in his own time.

It takes two to tangle. The bottom line is that a beleaguered US has decided not to have a crisis with North Korea.

The record of negotiations that the cretin in chief has finally allowed is dismal, and shows the effects on our standing as a nation, that no steps to enforce its agreements will be taken. Just as this group of war profiteers has proved no treaties, no conventions [such as the Geneva Conventions] that we have entered into have any hope of enforcement in the light of their ultimate war ambitions, so it has shown that it has no expectations of other nations in the matter of relations with this country.

As long as the present occupation of our White House continues, our influence is nil.