Why Bosworth Should Not Go to Pyongyang (Obama Kowtow to North Korea Begins This Tuesday)

Daily NK ^ | 4 December 2009 | Chris Green

[AmericanInTokyo]

Why Bosworth Should Not Go to Pyongyang

By Chris Green

[2009-12-04 16:48 ]

Author of, among other things, “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World,” Gordon Chang has today called for Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. chief nuclear negotiator, not to make the trip to Pyongyang for bilateral talks that he is scheduled to make on December 8th.

Writing for Forbes, Chang asserts that for Bosworth to go to Pyongyang at this time is both playing into North Korean hands and completely undermining the policy which Washington had appeared to be adhering to since Barack Obama came to office, namely that there would be no bilateral discussions outside the context of the Six-Party Talks.

Chang cites a speech given by Jeffrey Bader, the U.S. National Security Council’s Asia head, at the Brookings Institution last month. In it, Bader said that Stephen Bosworth would not make the trip to Pyongyang unless the North “acknowledged that the six-party talks were the proper "framework" for denuclearization discussions, the agenda for the Bosworth meeting was the denuclearization of North Korea, and the North Koreans reaffirmed their September 2005 commitments to surrender their nuclear arsenal.”

"If we see that, then there is no problem with bilateral contacts either in Pyongyang or elsewhere," Bader concluded in his speech. The problem, Chang claims, is that none of those things has happened, but Bosworth is apparently going anyway.

As a result, Bosworth needs to come home with North Korea's commitment to give up its nuclear arsenal. No other result will be adequate, Chang claims, for other nations which might aspire to challenge the United States will be watching the results of the bilateral tete-a-tete very closely, and “will see the Bosworth trip not so much as a test of Kim Jong Il but one of Washington's word.”

[AmericanInTokyo]

It is sickening. Even as we speak, irate groups of North Koreans are gathering and protesting the recent devaluation of the North Korean Won, and further the across the board order by Pyongyang this weekend to shoot-to-kill any and all people crossing into China from North Korea for whatever reason and ask questions later, which has gone out to prevent an exodus.

Obama sends a representative for pre-condition-less BILATERAL TALKS (Tuesday) at THIS time, and talks about North Korean coming back into the community of nations???!!

Insane. Another capitulation and international humiliation of the United States, with another Uncle Sugar Daddy/Uncle Sap payoff job pending to the Norks, just around the corner and out of your and my pockets.. Japanese here are just LIVID. Just the sentence that Obama is sending Bosworth anyway even though North Korea will give nothing, is unforgiveble.

Are there really any more doubts about this man in the White House, and his giving the barn and the cows away so cavalierly??

[AmericanInTokyo]

Ping!

[SatinDoll]

Really, you expect too much of Obama. He can’t help himself in a situation like this involving North Korea.

As a former community organizer he no doubt believes he can organize this dog-and-pony show better than anyone else. /sarc

[MGMSwordsman]

Do you mean Brian Bosworth? Now that would be stone cold.

[Stultis]

order by Pyongyang this weekend to shoot-to-kill any and all people crossing into China from North Korea

They better not! Didn't they pay any attention to Obama last Summer, when Iran shot down it's citizens in the street? Why, Bambi's likely to issue a mild, but deferential, rebuke, possibly within a or so after the blood starts flowing!!

[myknowledge]

If the blood starts flowing, Obama would have signed his own death warrant. </sarc>

[AmericanInTokyo]

"If the blood starts flowing, Obama would have signed his own death warrant. "

Just posted on FR:

N.Korean Rulers Worried Over Devaluation Backlash; Military Put On Sub-War Level Alert (Breaking)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks AmericanInTokyo.