Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/26/2003 4:41:23 PM PDT by MadIvan
COMPELLING new evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the illegal drug trade has convinced many American officials that the regime will use its underworld connections to sell nuclear materials to the highest bidder.
The threat has become real since a North Korean negotiator told the Americans last week that Pyongyang had nuclear weapons and the will to use or trade them.
The declaration put North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-il, back on a course of confrontation with Washington and prompted President George W Bush to accuse the regime of its “old blackmail”. The White House also said it would confer with allies about possibly seeking United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang.
Kim’s latest brinkmanship came as Australian police charged 30 North Koreans with heroin smuggling after a five-day chase that ended last Sunday with the capture of their ship by the Royal Australian Navy.
A court in Sydney denied bail to the alleged smugglers, who were arrested on board the Pong Su, a vessel owned by a North Korean trading company but registered in the former British colony of Tuvalu, a remote Pacific island. The Australians seized heroin worth £32m.
While the investigation yielded a dramatic success, its outcome proved to western officials that North Korea maintains links with some of the world’s most unscrupulous crime syndicates.
“The great fear is that if the North Koreans find a customer for fissile materials, they will not hesitate to sell,” said a western diplomat in China who follows North Korean affairs.
Prosecutors in Taiwan are also seeking the death penalty for six members of a Taiwanese smuggling gang who loaded £4m of heroin on board their fishing boat, the Shun Chi Fa, from a North Korean navy vessel last June.
Defectors claim Kim il-Sung, founder of the North Korean regime, ordered the cultivation of opium in 1992 and set aside state-run pharmaceutical plants to process it into heroin. The Kim family dictatorship has continued to raise revenue from drug sales and counterfeit currency as the country’s economy collapsed in the 1990s.
The regime has even used foreign aid donations of fertiliser to boost the opium crop, according to a recent report published in South Korea.
The European Union gave 123,785 tons of fertiliser to North Korea last year, while the South Koreans donated 300,000 tons. Last week the North Korean Red Cross asked its southern counterparts for more fertiliser this year.
It is the proven track record of criminal narcotics sales, plus the dictatorship’s history of unpredictable moves, that now has American military officials in South Korea and Washington deeply concerned.
Last week the North Koreans raised the stakes in their standoff with the United States. Talks in Beijing between North Korean officials and James Kelly, the American assistant secretary of state — that were intended to reduce tension — broke up without progress after the North Koreans fiercely asserted their right to nuclear weapons. A South Korean cabinet delegation due to travel to Pyongyang today will challenge their communist hosts over their claims.
The latest esclation in tensions seems certain to strengthen the hand of hawks within the Bush administration, who argue Kim cannot be trusted and that the US should push for regime change in North Korea.
Such a policy would cause new dissension between America and its allies. A North Korean delegation left for Britain yesterday, headed by Choi Su-hun, the vice-minister of foreign affairs, with the apparent aim of winning European understanding for the regime’s position. But the margin for diplomacy may be narrowing faster than the North Koreans think.
Officials in Japan and South Korea, the countries most vulnerable to North Korea’s missiles, already fear a massive western intelligence failure over the regime’s stock of 8,000 nuclear fuel rods at its reactor at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.
After a week of confused signals from the north’s propaganda organs, officials say there are increasing signs that Kim’s scientists may have succeeded in reprocessing some of the rods to yield plutonium, the element at the core of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.
Production of such fissile material is the “nightmare scenario” for Washington, a western diplomat said. “Having gone to war in Iraq to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, what do we do here and now?” he asked.
Regards, Ivan
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I see military involvement in the future and plenty of colateral damage no matter which way this goes.
Having made their threat, the new doctrine should be that any terrorist use of a nuke anywhere in the world will be presumed to be of NK origin, and we will turn NK into a glass parking lot in instant retaliation. If they don't like it, then they can shut down their operations and open them to U.S. inspections. After that, let China sort it out. They really don't want to be downwind of a nuclear pwered funny farm presided over by the Ill maniac.
I hate war with a passion, but if Seoul was 50 miles further south than it is, I would want the bombing to start the minute we had enough planes in the area. Kim Jong Il needs to eat shrapnel, and soon.
The White House also said it would confer with allies about possibly seeking United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang.
UN sanctions didn't work with Iraq and UN dithering didn't help with Rwanda or Kosovo. Most importantly, the North Koreans have said that they will consider sanctions an act of war. If diplomacy is too hostile for them, we might as well open with bombs.
“The great fear is that if the North Koreans find a customer for fissile materials, they will not hesitate to sell,” said a western diplomat in China who follows North Korean affairs.
At least they will have one less potential customer in Baghdad, and that doesn't count his terrorist "guests"!
War with North Korea scares me in a way war with Iraq never did, but it may be time to send the hunting parties out again...
That would be 'Kim Mentally Il' you're referring to?
F-80
What is really worrysome is the fact that democRATs will do ANYTHING to get elected. If that means the a few hundred thousand people will have to die to set them up for election, so be it. They could care less about the country or it's people. They just want power...
waits to feast on American CITY-Kill
Some may think the horrors won't begin
until after Hillary Rodham Clinton
is inaugurated.
Wisdom tells us that the horrors will
come before an election to ensure her
victory as planned.
9-11-01 First Attack
??-??-?? Next Attack?
Whether HRC wins or loses
America may be in for a bumpy time.
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