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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Friday it was prepared to hold direct talks with North Korea to try to coax it back into multilateral negotiations on ending its nuclear programs. Previously, U.S. officials had sent mixed signals about direct meetings, at times saying Pyongyang must first commit to resume multilateral discussions and at others saying bilateral talks could only occur "in the context" of the multilateral discussions. The department denied changing its policy on direct talks, saying any bilateral meeting would be to bring Pyongyang back to multilateral talks. "We are prepared to enter into a...

During Kargil, Pervez sent me to N Korea, got 200 missiles: A Q Khan Lalit K Jha Posted: Thursday , Sep 10, 2009 at 0509 hrs Disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist A Q Khan has said his country was short of anti-aircraft missiles during the 1999 Kargil War, so General Pervez Musharraf sent him to North Korea to purchase 200 missiles. In an interview to Pakistani Urdu TV channel Aaj News — its translation has been obtained by Secrecy News of the Federation of American Scientists — Khan said: “In 1999, Gen Musharraf sent me along with Gen Iftikhar, who was...

Pakistan's nuclear scientist A Q Khan has said that Sri Lankan Muslims based in Dubai were suppliers of nuclear material and equipments not only to Pakistan but also to Iran and Libya. 'Be it Libya, Iran, or Pakistan, the same suppliers were responsible for providing the material through the same third party in Dubai,' Khan has revealed in an interview to a Pakistani news channel. 'It was a company with which we had established links when we could not receive the material from Europe. They were Sri Lankan Muslims,' Khan said in his interview in Urdu, aired in Karachi on...

SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States moved on Tuesday to freeze the assets of two North Korean entities believed to be involved in atomic and missile programmes, raising pressure on Pyongyang to resume disarmament talks. Pyongyang has been sending out conflicting messages. In August, it made a series of conciliatory gestures, followed this month by more nuclear threats and then straining ties with Seoul by releasing water from a dam on a river flowing across the border, triggering a flash flood that killed six South Koreans. WHAT ARE NORTH KOREA'S LEADERS UP TO? Destitute North Korea wants cash and an...

A towering North Korean hotel which Esquire magazine once dubbed "the worst building in the history of mankind" has come back to life with a facade of shiny glass windows affixed to one side of the concrete monolith. But few expect the North will ever finish construction of its 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel, started in 1987 and halted for 16 years because it could have bankrupted the destitute state. "The hotel doesn't look as shoddy as it once did, probably because of the reflective glass," said a member of a civic group in South Korea that recently returned from a visit...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea said Friday that it is in the final stages of enriching uraninum, a process that could give the nation a second way to make nuclear bombs. The official Korean Central News Agency said in a report early Friday that North Korea informed the U.N. Security Council it is forging ahead with its nuclear program in defiance of international calls to abandon its atomic ambitions. The dispatch said plutonium "is being weaponized," and that uranium enrichment—a program North Korea revealed in recent months—was entering the "completion phase."

We arrived at the frozen river separating China and North Korea at 5 o'clock on the morning of March 17. The air was crisp and still, and there was no one else in sight. As the sun appeared over the horizon, our guide stepped onto the ice. We followed him.

PAKISTAN SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON: The United States warned Tuesday that reputed Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has regained freedom of movement in Pakistan, still risks spreading his nuclear weapons know-how. It stopped short of criticizing its ally in the war on terror but recalled that Washington has long raised with Islamabad its fears about Khan, who five years ago admitted leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya." SNIPPET: "David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and nuclear specialist, told AFP that ‘it is a mistake’ to remove restrictions on a man who cannot be ‘trusted.’He said there is...

The two American television reporters imprisoned in North Korea for over four months have written an article describing the circumstances surrounding their arrests and detention, claiming they were arrested on Chinese soil. Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who work for the American Current TV channel, were arrested in March and put on trial after allegedly crossing the North Korean border without entry permits and sentenced to 12-years in a labour camp.... In the lengthy article posted on Current TV's website, the women said they never intended to cross a frozen river into North Korea and were “firmly back” on Chinese...

Axis Of Evil: North Korean arms bound for the Islamic Republic of Iran in violation of U.N. sanctions were intercepted, but Tehran will still be the first nuclear terror regime. No wonder Dick Cheney wanted to attack.The United Arab Emirates' seizure of a French-owned ship transporting 10 containers of North Korean-made explosives, rocket-launched grenades and other arms disguised as oil equipment to Iran is a welcome confirmation that the Muslim Middle East recognizes the Islamofascist threat in its midst. Disturbingly, however, it also confirms that the axis of evil that aligns North Korea, Iran and other bloodthirsty regimes against the...

Japan's leader-in-waiting has a delusional vision for his country and its relationship with the rest of Asia. Yukio Hatoyama dreams of an Asian union, a utopia free of rapacious American capitalism, a region bound together by fraternity and a common currency. Were Hatoyama a soapbox orator his fantasizing could be dismissed as twaddle, but he isn't. He's about to become the next prime minister of the world's No. 2 economy, following his party's victory Sunday in a general election. In an op-ed piece, "A New Path for Japan," that ran in The New York Times recently, the leader-in-waiting revealed his...

The Term "Axis of Evil" has been a source of liberal derision ever since President Bush coined the phrase in his 2002 State of the Union address... Seven years later Iraq is a fledgling democracy, but North Korea and Iran are still at it, in fact they are working together: The United Arab Emirates has seized a cargo ship earlier this month bound for Iran with a cache of banned arms from North Korea, the first such seizure since sanctions against North Korea were ramped up, diplomats and officials told The Associated Press Friday. The seizure was carried out in...

The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship secretly carrying embargoed North Korean arms to Iran, say diplomats. News of the interception comes at a sensitive time. North Korea has invited the US for bilateral talks on nuclear issues and the UN Security Council’s western members are pressing for greater Iranian co-operation over its nuclear programme. The UAE reported the seizure to the UN sanctions committee responsible for vetting the implementation of measures, including an arms embargo, imposed against North Korea under Security Council resolution 1874, according to diplomats in New York. The committee, chaired by Turkey, has made no...

The United Arab Emirates has seized a cargo of North Korean weapons being shipped to Iran, which would have violated a U.N. embargo on arms exports from the communist state, Western diplomats said on Friday. The weapons seized on Aug. 14 included rocket launchers, detonators, munitions and ammunition for rocket-propelled grenades, they said. The ship, called the ANL-Australia, was Australian-owned and flying a Bahamas flag. Diplomats said the UAE reported the incident, which occurred two weeks ago, to the Security Council sanctions committee on North Korea. The committee sent letters to Tehran and Pyongyang on Aug. 25 informing them of...

NEW YORK (CNN) — The United Arab Emirates seized a ship carrying banned arms from North Korea to Iran, diplomats told CNN Friday. The incident occurred in early August and was reported to the U.N. Security Council’s North Korea Sanctions committee, Western diplomats at the United Nations said. The diplomats did not disclose which country owned the vessel. It also was not immediately clear whether this was the first time such an incident had happened, or only the first time such a case had been revealed. A U.N. resolution passed in July imposes an embargo on the shipment of arms...

John Choe lived through 9/11 in New York City and shortly thereafter became legislative director for a city councilman – but led protests against toppling the Taliban and still boasts of volunteering for an organization whose keynote speaker proclaimed two weeks after 9/11 “many of those who died [in the Twin Towers] were already targets of the daily violence of global capitalism.� He made two pilgrimages to Stalinist North Korea and a trip to Castro’s Cuba “to create new ways of building solidarity with the struggles of workers and people of color.� He denounced “American imperialism,� the U.S. “war� against...

While following a link from LGF, I was able to get to the official North Korean tourism webpage. Now I know that you're thinking, "Why does North Korea need a tourism page? Doesn't everyone already know it's a workers' paradise?" But you can still see the awesome on their page. While on the site, I noticed that there is an upcoming trip for those interested in visiting the DPRK-- except for those with American passports. I also read the indisputable fact that the South wants to reunite with the North, but a pesky 'wall built by the Americans' and 40,000...

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists released after nearly five months in North Korean custody, have been widely portrayed at home as victims of unduly harsh punishment by a repressive government for simply doing their job. But here in South Korea, human rights advocates, bloggers and Christian pastors are accusing them of needlessly endangering the very people they tried to cover: North Korean refugees and the activists who help them. The accusations stem from a central fear repeated in newspapers and blogs here: that the notes and videotapes the journalists gathered in China before their ill-fated venture...

LONDON — Iran and Syria reportedly participated in a failed missile launch by North Korea. ShareThis Western diplomatic sources said Iran, North Korea and Syria joined in the firing of two new ballistic missiles in 2009. The sources said the North Korean missiles veered off-course and killed or injured scores of people. None of the three countries has acknowledged a joint missile test. In May, Syria was said to have reported a natural gas explosion in the area of Manbij. "The test took place in Syria in May and was a complete failure," a diplomatic source said. On Aug. 14,...

Defense: The Air Force airborne laser program successfully completes a simulated kill from a plane able to find, track and destroy a live ballistic missile. We can shoot down enemy missiles. Instead, we're shooting down the laser program.The Aug. 10 effort was the third such test — sort of like a sniper sighting the target with the red dot of a laser without actually pulling the trigger. In early June, the airborne laser (ABL) program engaged two un-instrumented missiles. This was the first in-flight test against an instrumented target missile. A modified Boeing 747-400F aircraft took off from Edwards Air...

Defense: Overlooked in the defense budget cuts is the decimation of missile defense systems. As North Korea tested an ICBM, our defense secretary was scrapping a system that could have destroyed it with a single shot.We will miss the F-22 Raptor, perhaps the only plane that could evade the sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system Russia is selling to Iran. Russia's S-300 system is "one of the most lethal, if not the most lethal, all-altitude area defense" systems, according to the International Strategy and Assessment Service, a Virginia-based think tank. But the aircraft we and the nation will miss the...

LAST week, I speculated about what "ransom" the Obama administration may have had ex-President Bill Clinton promise to win the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee from the North Korean regime. It didn't take long to learn at least the first concession. President Obama has broken with past US policy to agree to bilateral talks with North Korea -- a diplomatic plum that Kim Jong Il has sought for years, and a major coup in his attempt to nail down the succession of his 26-year-old son, Kim Jong Un. While the administration maintains that Clinton (in the words of...

In a further sign of a possible thaw in relations between Pyongyang and Washington, two North Korean diplomats are to meet Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, today. The meeting is being held at the request of Kim Myong-Gil, a minister at the North Korean mission at the United Nations, and will take place "for most of the day" in Santa Fe, a spokeswoman for Mr Richardson said. She said that the diplomats had expressed interest in clean energy solutions being developed in New Mexico and stressed that Mr Richardson was not representing the administration of President Barack Obama....

WASHINGTON — When former President Bill Clinton landed in Pyongyang on Aug. 4 to win the release of two imprisoned American journalists, senior officials said, he met an unexpectedly spry North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, who feted him over a long dinner that night, even proposing to stay up afterward. Kim was flanked by two longtime aides — a surprise to Americans who had suspected that both men had been pushed aside — and he gave no hint that North Korea was in the throes of a succession struggle, despite the widespread questions over how long he might live....

Amid continuing tension over political upheaval in Iran, the U.S. Defense Department says it wants to accelerate production of a 30,000-pound "ultra-large bunker-buster" bomb designed to destroy deeply buried installations. The Pentagon has requested Congress to provide the necessary funding to ensure that the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a next-generation bomb known as MOP and built by Boeing, would be ready by July 2010, spokesman Bryan Whitman said on Aug. 3. The non-nuclear weapon will be the biggest conventional bomb the United States has ever deployed. It carries 5,300 pounds of high explosive inside a 25.5-foot bomb casing of hardened steel...

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak will announce Saturday a plan to offer massive aid to North Korea if it abandons its nuclear ambitions, his office said Friday in a press release. The plan will be contained in a speech to commemorate the 64th anniversary of liberation from the Japanese colonial rule, which lasted from 1910 to 1945. "As for policies toward North Korea, a broad range of proposals will be made for the establishment of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, covering areas of the political, economic, military and security," the press release said. Lee will also reiterate...

Defense: President Obama dreams of a world without nuclear weapons. Unless testing and maintenance of our nuclear deterrent is resumed, it will be a world without American nuclear weapons.In his Prague speech this spring, the president spoke of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," ignoring the fact that before 1945 we lived in such a world and it was neither peaceful nor secure. We recently observed the anniversaries of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, actions that brought an abrupt end to the carnage of World War II and arguably...

American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for Al Gore’s Current TV organization, are now back on American soil. The two were captured by North Korean security forces in March of this year under circumstances that remain in dispute. They were charged with espionage, tried, and sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp. Were the women captured on North Korean soil or on Chinese soil? And why were they there? Perhaps these mysteries will now be solved. But what we may never know is the price that the Obama Administration paid for their release. In a New York...

North Korea's Kim Jong Il awarded his son, Kim Jong Un, a special commendation for his direct handling of the 2 captured Americans and Pres. Clinton recently. Internal speech was made by the Domestic Security Bureau, which said "Comrade Kim Jong En in his brilliance is to be awarded for excellent work. He dealt skillfully with the (2 US journalist) spy incident, and even was able to force a former US President to come all the way over the Pacific Ocean to apologize to us."

The story has all the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster. Two beautiful girls in peril, an evil North Korean dictator holding them captive and, riding to the rescue, Slick Willy himself, former President Bill Clinton. ~snip~The two women were sent to China in March to do a report about North Korean refugees pouring over the border. A source familiar with Current said: ‘It was the sort of bleeding-hearts liberal story that would play well to their target market. But then Laura decided to take it a step further.’ ~snip~On March 17, Laura and Euna were arrested by North Korean soldiers...

Former President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton has returned from Pyongyang, North Korea, with Al Gore's employees Laura Ling and Euna Lee. The two women, reporters for Gore's Current TV operation, were seized by North Korean border guards March 17 along the frozen Tumen River -- the border between North Korea and China. On June 8, following a five-day "trial," Pyongyang's Central Court convicted the women of "committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry" and sentenced them to 12 years' hard labor. On Tuesday, Aug. 4, Mr. Clinton, accompanied by a doctor and his former chief of staff John...

IT is generally agreed that North Korea and Burma have the two most oppressive regimes in Asia. They rule over two of the poorest countries in the continent, and that is no coincidence whatever. But there is one marked difference between them. No foreign leaders pay court to the Burmese generals in their weirdly grandiose new capital of Naypidaw (which makes even Brasilia seem cozy and intimate), whereas even Bill Clinton, the world’s most recognisable celebrity statesman, makes the pilgrimage to Pyongyang. Clinton was there to secure the release of two American journalists who were seized on the Chinese-North Korean...

The U.S. national security adviser says North Korean leader Kim Jong Il still appears to be in "full control" of his government. Jim Jones based the assessment Sunday on reports from the recent trip of former U.S. President Bill Clinton to North Korea. South Korean intelligence reports have suggested Mr. Kim has pancreatic cancer, raising questions about his successor. North Korean media deny Mr. Kim is sick. Mr. Clinton traveled to Pyongyang this past week to secure the release of two U.S. journalists who were jailed in March for illegally entering North Korea. Jones said on Fox News Sunday Mr....

Ever since former President Bill Clinton came back from North Korea with two freed American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, there has been some debate as to whether or not the trip was wise. The most prominent critic of the trip was John Bolton. The symbolism of a former president going to meet with Kim Jong Il I think is something that benefits Kim Jong Il a lot more than the United States, and it only encourages others to do the same thing," John Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, tells Madeleine Brand.

Former President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton has returned from Pyongyang, North Korea, with Al Gore's employees Laura Ling and Euna Lee. The two women, reporters for Gore's Current TV operation, were seized by North Korean border guards March 17 along the frozen Tumen River -- the border between North Korea and China. On June 8, following a five-day "trial," Pyongyang's Central Court convicted the women of "committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry" and sentenced them to 12 years' hard labor. On Tuesday, Aug. 4, Mr. Clinton, accompanied by a doctor and his former chief of staff John...

The new President is having to address his predecessor's toxic legacy The image of two American women weeping with relief, after being spared 12 years of hard labour in North Korea, led to a tempting conclusion: that even in the darkest recesses of the world's most reviled regimes, the Obama effect is starting to take hold. From the moment he came to office just over six months ago, the new US president has sought to undertake a fundamental rebranding of America's international image. Gone is the Bush administration's Manichean view that divided the world between good countries (those that supported...

I am wondering: Obama and Al Gore think huge carbon footprints are sinful. But they apparently endorsed a private jet flying all the way across the ocean with one guy...to pick up two women. Can we measure how much carbon was put into our atmosphere for these liberals' jaunt?

TOKYO — As former U.S. President Bill Clinton left North Korea with two pardoned American journalists for home Wednesday, relatives of Japanese victims of North Korean abductions expressed a desire for someone to take action to settle their issue as well. ‘‘I want someone, no matter whether it is a private individual, to negotiate with North Korea...to bring the North to the table by encouraging and pressing it,’’ said Shigeru Yokota, 76, whose daughter Megumi was taken to the country in 1977 at age 13. Yokota appeared irritated at Pyongyang’s lack of action since promising to set up a panel...

Personally, I believe what will drive North Korea-U.S. relations as well as with the other four parties from the six party framework, is how each party comes to accept the fact that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. This stands in stark and direct conflict with the fact that the United States will never accept North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power along the lines that the U.S. has with India -- and rightly so. But, I do believe the U.S. would be content to see a steady-state where North Korea has nuclear weapons, but doesn't share/sell...

A wealthy Hollywood producer paid for the flight that carried former President Bill Clinton and two American journalists home from North Korea, a California businessman confirmed Wednesday. Stephen Bing, a close Clinton friend and longtime Democratic fundraiser, is the plane's owner, said Marc Foulkrod of Burbank, Calif., chairman of Avjet Corp., the company that manages the aircraft. Foulkrod said the Federal Aviation Administration "at the highest levels" cleared the flight plan, which required an exception because U.S. planes are not allowed to fly into North Korea. The effort to set up and clear the flight only started four to five...

There is one important bit of information that has been left out by every news service that has covered the release of the two women from North Korea. If anyone can answer this question for me, please do. I have found nothing about it anywhere. What did we give up to North Korea for their release?

Former president Bill Clinton's central role in the return of two journalists detained by North Korea has once again cast a spotlight on his vast web of financial and political contacts, a network that troubled senators who weighed whether to confirm his wife as secretary of state. In the case of the detainees, Clinton tapped wealthy business people to execute a mission that, without a special federal waiver for the aircraft to travel to North Korea, would have been illegal. A few weeks ago, one of his business contacts had the ear of Hillary Rodham Clinton in her role as...

It was not long ago that the world had written him off as an ageing leader with little or no remaining grip on power. But Bill Clinton is back. So it seems is the other dear leader, Kim Jong-il. For a man who had just a few weeks ago been declared terminally ill – one Japanese academic had even claimed he was dead – North Korea’s dictator is looking quite sprightly. The extraordinary photographs showing him flanked by a former US president (doing his best to imitate a sphinx) and several former US officials are a propaganda coup. They will...

SDI: If you missed the news, which isn't hard given how poorly these things are covered, our "unproven" missile defense proved itself again last week, when a U.S. warship downed a simulated North Korean missile in flight.The test, conducted in Hawaiian waters by the Navy and the Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency (MDA), was the 23rd firing by ships equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile defense system. It was the 19th success, including the shoot-down of a dead U.S. spy satellite last year. A short-range ballistic missile simulating a missile like North Korea's Nodongs or Scuds was fired from...

Foreign Policy: We're glad former President Bill Clinton returned from North Korea with two American journalists who had been wrongly imprisoned there. But apologizing sets a very bad diplomatic precedent.Who wouldn't be happy seeing the tearful, smiling faces of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the journalists who were nabbed by Kim Jong Il's security forces while on a reporting mission on the China border? The secretive state nabbed them five months ago, and a government tribunal sentenced them to 12 years of hard labor. In North Korea, hard labor means hard labor. Had the sentences been carried out, one or...

WASHINGTON - Republican Senator John McCain says North Korea was attempting to use former President Bill Clinton’s visit for propaganda purposes and enhance the prestige of Pyongyang. In an interview with Reuters, McCain said the Obama administration should resist any temptation to engage in direct talks with the North Koreans but instead should push North Korea to rejoin stalled six-party negotiations over its nuclear program. The six-party talks include the United States and North and South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. McCain, the Republican candidate in last year’s presidential election won by Barack Obama, said he believes all Americans appreciate...

Bill Clinton's unexpected and successful trip to Pyongyang to secure the release of two American journalists sentenced to 12-year prison terms was a highly theatrical coup for the former president. His surprise arrival in North Korea, the three hours of face-to-face talks with an ailing though evidently still sentient Kim Jong-il, the tearful dawn homecoming in California – it was a perfectly executed foreign-policy triumph, played out live on the world's TV screens. But who has gained from it? Obviously, Euna Lee and Laura Ling have won their freedom from what was, in effect, a state-sponsored hostage-taking operation by one...

I just have one word: "HUH?"

WASHINGTON — It was a stirring scene: Bill Clinton, the former president, and Al Gore, his former vice president, back together, sharing a long and emotional hug as Mr. Clinton delivered back to American soil from captivity in North Korea two journalists who worked for Mr. Gore. There on the tarmac in California were the two dominant Democrats of the 1990s, having helped to ease an international crisis on behalf of an administration in which Hillary Rodham Clinton serves as secretary of state to the man, President Obama, who defeated Mrs. Clinton last year in a bitter race for the...