Posted on 03/23/2008 10:45:12 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
A Ticking Clock on N. Korea
By David Ignatius
Sunday, March 23, 2008; B07
For many months, Bush administration officials have been imagining a valedictory conclusion to their long-running negotiations with North Korea: Pyongyang would make a "complete and correct declaration" about its nuclear program, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would travel to North Korea to celebrate normalization of relations with a former member of the "axis of evil."
But the North Korea breakthrough isn't happening, and administration officials know they are running out of time before President Bush leaves office. The New York Philharmonic has come and gone from its Feb. 26 concert in Pyongyang -- without Rice there to add a nimble-fingered piano accompaniment, as some analysts had predicted.
An agreement remains tantalizingly close: The North Koreans are disabling their reactor at Yongbyon, which was a key part of the denuclearization agreement announced last October. And there are hopes that if Pyongyang will finally deliver the promised nuclear declaration, then negotiations can move to a final (and even more difficult) phase of bargaining over destruction of North Korea's handful of nuclear weapons and an estimated 30 to 40 kilograms of plutonium.
What is blocking this breakthrough is North Korea's refusal to explain its nuclear relationship with Syria. This remains one of the murkiest foreign policy issues of the past year, but administration policymakers, intelligence officials and other analysts recently shed some new light on what happened.
The mystery centers on Israel's Sept. 6 bombing of a facility in Syria. This was to be the site of a nuclear reactor, U.S. officials believe. North Korea had made a secret agreement to provide technical know-how and some materials for the reactor, although not fissile material. The Israelis destroyed the reactor site --
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ping!
Perhaps, Lil Kim is waiting for the new appeasing Marxist Black Liberation Theologian Obamasan?
yitbos
It was they who first provided military training to Hezballah.
BTTT
They know what W’s offering. Our next president will offer more.
OH BOY this getting good LOLOLOL!
Pinging both NK and Middle East list
Chia Pet going be so roaney
Is anyone surprised? Nothing changes with them. We should assume the worst about NK materials/tech going to Syria and bomb them both accordingly.
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