Posted on 10/01/2004 7:40:46 PM PDT by Job03
In Geneva in October 1994...U.S. and North Korean representatives finally announced a breakthrough in their talks. The two countries had begun bilateral negotiations over nuclear proliferation concerns...and finally a settlement was at hand.
The U.S. initiated the talks after North Korea threatened to withdraw from the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty....The United States was already convinced the North Koreans had produced at least one nuclear weapon....Between sessions, North Korea violated an international treaty when military personnel removed fuel rods from a nuclear reactor without the presence of a UN monitor. The United States threatened to lobby the UN for sanctions against North Korea, whose population already suffered from widespread famine. Each time talks broke down, top White House officials and military experts spoke publicly about the prospect of war on the Korean peninsula.
After one breakdown in the talks, former President Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang to meet North Korean officials. Tensions between the two countries cooled. But the sudden death of North Korea's leader Kim Il-sung halted progress in the negotiations once again.
When the third round of talks started up again in the fall of 1994, negotiators on both sides wrangled over every word of a potential accord....In the pact, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons development program. In exchange, the United States and its allies promised to provide North Korea with heavy fuel oil and two proliferation-resistant, light-water reactor power plants. The deal also called for gradual improvement of relations between the United States and North Korea and between North and South Korea.
...But within a few short months, the rivals' old suspicions of one another crept back. Implementation of the new agreement was stalled.
(Excerpt) Read more at pbs.org ...
Even worse he got away unchallenged for blaming Bush for the North getting nuclear weapons. The blame properly belongs to Clinton.
To me Kerry's Korea declaration was the most startling event of the debates. Not only did he ignore the historical failure, but he ignored the fact that bilateral negotiations in this context is almost universally viewed as a strategic error by the diplomatic community. I am hard pressed to think of a case where a party has negotiated a separate peace out of strength. It is almost always a sign of weakness and collapse, which is precisely why the PRK has gone out of their way to insist on it. They couldn't believe their good fortune when the Clinton administration agreed to it and would do anything to regain such a position.
Holbrook likes it because his potential benefactor put it out there. He should have his sniveling diplomatic nose rubbed in dog doo for going along with this outrage!
O'Reilly hammered Richard Holbrooke with this tonight. He said that Kerry's plan for North Korea is just more of the same Clinton-Albright appeasement that allowed NK to gain nuclear weapons in the first place.
Kerry is a big fan of bilateral talks. Recall that he had his own personal bilateral talks with the North Vietnam communists in Paris.
Didn't they walk out of the talks, and Albright chased them down the hall .. seems like I recall some kind of story like that.
And .. when Albright entered a room to meet with them they thought she was the maid ..??
Bush should have told Kerry the last time I remember you handling bilaterl talks we left several pow's in a communist country and never saw alot of them again.
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