Hill denies removal of N. Korea from terror list by year-end+

Breitbart.com ^ | Nov. 14, 2007 | Kyodo

[Jet Jaguar]

President George W. Bush will not notify Congress by Friday of his intention to take North Korea from a U.S. list of terrorist- sponsoring nations, top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said Wednesday.

Hill made the remark to reporters at an airport outside Washington upon returning from an overseas trip, saying the United States will not finish removing the reclusive state from the blacklist by the end of the year.

To get a country off the list, the president is obliged to notify Congress of his intention to do so at least 45 days in advance. If he wants to delist North Korea, Bush must send a notice to Congress by Friday.

Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said he has not heard of any final decision coming in the next few days on North Korea's status.

Noting there are some legal requirements to be met by Pyongyang, he reiterated the need for the country to declare that it is turning away from acts of terrorism.

Hill said the president's notification to Congress will be a de facto removal of North Korea from the list. It is expected that Washington will explore the timing of the notification toward the year-end, in view of the progress made about Pyongyang's disabling and declaring its nuclear programs.

A joint six-way statement released Oct. 3 calls for the disablement of a 5-megawatt experimental nuclear reactor, a nuclear fuel fabrication plant and a spent-fuel reprocessing facility in Yongbyon by the year's end.

Japan, one of the nations involved in the six-party talks, has urged the United States not to remove North Korea from the list until progress is made on the issue of Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.

The disablement of the facilities began earlier this month in line with the second phase of the denuclearization-for-aid deal reached in February by the six parties, also involving South Korea, China and Russia.

In the initial phase, North Korea shut down and sealed its key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon in July and allowed International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, in exchange for energy aid.

[AmericanInTokyo]

I see bridges in Brooklyn are being sold these days.

This is not what the script worked out in Berlin last January between Chris "Jong" Hill and Kim Gye Gwan, his DPRK counterpart, based on the current Bush/Condi "neo-realist" plan of appeasing Albrightian Diplomacy when it comes to North Korea.

But don't worry. I am sure there is a side-letter somewhere in Chia Pet's desk drawer.

Really. This is merely a poor attempt at spin if not damage control. It is already an open secret here in Asia where this is all leading to, by January if not by mid-Spring.

President Hunter or President Thompson, for that matter, is going to have to scrap all this crap anyway. What's the use?

[AmericanInTokyo]

Bump and Ping!

[Brad from Tennessee]

This is the news media trying to use a non-story to stir stuff up between Bush and Japan.

[SevenofNine]

Just damn

Can you say Legacy AIT I know you coulddddd

[AmericanInTokyo]

No.

This is President BUSH stirring up things between Japan and the United States.

To the contrary of the advice he received in early October, in the form of an urgent cable from Ambassador Tom Schieffer (his friend) to Bush and Condi from Tokyo.

[Wiz]

It’s Rice and Hill that are doing harm. They are doing too much harm with Israel and US relations ignoring NK’s involvement in Syria. They should be kicked out and be replaced by Bolton with Rumsfeld back to the Pentagon. That will make things better.

[Wiz]

I wouldn’t be surprised if NK was bribing both Rice and Hill in the back, engaging into some type of lobby.

[mkjessup]

We could solve several problems here, with some creative reorganization:

1.) We've all heard about those chickensh*t 'diplomats' at State who are fighting tooth and nail NOT to go to Iraq to work in our embassy complex.

2.) We all know that 99.99 percent of the State Department are anti-American, anti-Israel, Arabic/Persian/Communist lovin' toadies. (that .01 percent is to cut some slack for the janitorial staff)

3.) SecState Condi 'I don't dance but I do play the piano' Rice thinks she's going to eclipse even Henry Kissinger with her ingenious (har har) diplomatic overtures.

4.) North Korea desperately needs cash, and craves prestige.

ANSWER:

Raze the State Department building on 'C' Street NW right to the ground, and announce that our NEW State Department Headquarters will be located in PYONGYANG North Korea and that we will LEASE the unfinished Ryugyong Hotel/Skyscraper from Comrade Chia Pet:


THIS would be a "win win", we remove disloyal and untrustworthy bureaucrats from one of the most infamous nests of sedition in these United States, North Korea gets an influx of Communist sympathizers, plus they get cash for office space (obtained from the salaries of those reassigned State Dept employees, who won't need money in that perfect (heh heh!) socialist juchebag economy that Chia Pet is running.

Well it was a nice thought anyway.

[Brad from Tennessee]

It seems to me they are dangling the carrot in front of North Korea but are keeping it out of reach until they get what they want. I don’t believe the real diplomacy going on with this issue is as transparent as it appears in press reports. Japan may have been wronged by North Korea during the Cold War but if the last 70 years is taken into account, Japanese crimes outweigh Korean. Dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program is at least as vital to Japan as it is to the U.S. By making a big issue over North Korea’s terrorism status Japan gives the removal of that status greater currency as a negotiating chip.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Wiz,

True, Rice and Chris Jong Hill (along with Victor Cha) are or were the water carriers for this spectacular and most naive sellout, but it is true that at the end of the day, the President HAD to know of and approve of this. (The only good guy in this whole equation, IMHO, is the Vice President whom it is said lobbied vigorously against this tact).

In fact, President Bush approval to go forward with this assinine plan, and double-cross Japan (remember the Japanese kidnap victims and his tearful visit w/ Megumi Yokota's mother in the Oval Office, not to mention promises to Koizumi???),apparantly came to Secretary Rice after she had left Kuwait earlier this year and transited through Berlin, and got the sellout proposition in the form of a briefing (I forget if it was by phone or in cable) directly from Wiz, Chris "Jong" Hill.

Essentially the President signed off on it--for a variety of reasons, the probably most pressing being lame duck-state "legacy" which is endemic with Administrations coming to a close--but there were indeed other critical mass issues no doubt.

Slick Willie Clinton took it even one step further in 2000 when he was almost poised and set to go to Pyongyang directly to see the little dictator and curry his favor--but he could not pull that off because of intransigent things Kim Jong il did that EVEN the Clintonites could not ignore or sweep under the rug Madeline Albright danced on.

It is one big mess. And we have backtracked unmistakeably. Seoul knows it. Beijing knows it. Tokyo knows it. Moscow knows it. (Some in) Washington (know) it. But most of all, Pyongyang knows it.

[AmericanInTokyo]

It is a carrot and stick game, perhaps.

Unfortunately, what Pyongyang knows is that, D.C. (at least this administration in its closing months) is not pre-disposed on using the "stick" and will find every way to use "carrots", such as the end game conclusion has already been reached so they are just negotiating their way along as they go with a view of reaching that result anyways. It is all process oriented at this point, based on a very faulty premise, that we can even trust the DPRK to do what they said.

Bush had it right the first place. The only credible way to ride DPRK of nukes was for the slow strangulation and ultimate capitulation of Kim Jong-il regime. Kim at one time had that true fear and went underground for weeks at a time.

It is clear that will not happen now...career State types have had their way.

[Brad from Tennessee]

If so then we are just repeating what Clinton/Albright did. North Korea shut down its program for them but it had a “secret” facility we supposedly weren’t aware of. You are right about the isolation campaign. It worked well and may have eventually forced a regime change or a collapse of the government.

[AmericanInTokyo]

The Yomiuri Shimbun-- The amicable atmosphere at a dinner party held at the U.S. envoy's residence in Tokyo's Roppongi district on Oct. 31 turned gloomy when U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alexander Arvizu made a statement to the effect that Washington would remove North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism provided it did not commit a terrorist attack--such as the midair bombing of a Korea Airlines plane at the hands of a North Korean agent in November 1987--within a period of six months before that decision. Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese people would not be factored into the decision. Japanese attendees at the dinner comprised eight members of the parliamentarian league on the abduction issue, including former Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Takeo Hiranuma and former Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council Chairman Shoichi Nakagawa. The dinner was organized by the United States to hear the views of Japanese lawmakers on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The suprapartisan parliamentary league headed by Hiranuma has adopted a hard-line stance on North Korea. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used to be a member of the league. The participating lawmakers considered the meeting to be an opportunity for the United States to assuage their concerns regarding preparations to remove North Korea from the terrorism-sponsors list. Removing Pyongyang from the list would give an impression both at home and abroad of a collapse in Japan-U.S. cooperation on the abduction issue.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Yasuo Fukuda, the low-key new Japanese prime minister, comes to Washington this week to privately tell President George W. Bush that U.S. policy has gone too far toward conciliation with North Korea. The Japanese are unhappy about lack of U.S. interest in the Pyongyang regime's abduction of Japanese nationals.

From Human Events....