North Korea Ratcheting Back Up Its Nuclear Program

Ever more wonderful becomes the occupied White House posturing about successes in negotiating away the North Korean nuclear program. Today, the former Axis of Evil nation declared that it would be increasing that program - to defend against U.S. hostilities.

As I posted a few days ago, the deadline missed by North Korea received not even a shrug as the executive branch hoped its problems with nuance would just go away.

North Korea's state media warned Friday that the communist country would bolster its "war deterrent" to fend off what it alleged was a U.S. plot of nuclear war, as 100,000 people rallied in support of the government.

The country's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper claimed that the U.S. is modernizing its nuclear arsenal, but made no mention that North Korea missed a year-end deadline to declare all its nuclear programs under an international disarmament agreement.

"Our republic will continue to harden its war deterrent further in response to the U.S. stepping up its nuclear war moves," the paper said in a commentary, carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea often uses "deterrent," "war deterrent," or "nuclear deterrent" to refer to its nuclear weapons.

The U.S. has repeatedly stressed that it has no intention of attacking or invading North Korea, and would normalize relations with the North if it gave up its nuclear programs.

Pyongyang has promised to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for energy aid and political concessions. In October, it pledged to disable its nuclear facilities and issue a declaration on its atomic programs by the end of the year — in return for the equivalent of 1 million tons of oil from its partners in the six-way talks — the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

But the North missed the Dec. 31 deadline, and has not explained why.
(snip)
Also Friday, another North Korean newspaper, Minju Joson, said the country had no option but to slow the disablement work, because the U.S. and other negotiating counterparts delayed fulfilling their commitments to the communist nation.

A North Korean official made a similar claim last week.

"This shows that it is fully up to the U.S. and related countries whether the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula would be attained or not," the paper said in a commentary, also carried by KCNA.

The intelligence which has been lacking in conducting this country's foreign relations is every day more sorely needed. In a few weeks we will be only a year away from inaugurating a better executive - it would be impossible to find a worse one - on January 20, 2009.

Hopefully there will still be a world to have relations with.