Posted on 10/10/2006 3:37:05 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
North Korea wants to talk
Gerard McManus and agencies
October 10, 2006 12:00am
A NORTH Korean official said Pyongyang is willing to return to international arms talks and abandon its atomic program if the US takes "corresponding measures," reports suggest.
"The nuclear test is an expression of our intention to face the United States across the negotiating table," the unnamed official said, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
"What we want is security of the (North), including guaranteeing our system."
Yonhap didn't say how or where it contacted the official, or why no name was given.
The official didn't elaborate on what the corresponding measures would be.
But one of them is believed to be a long-standing North Korean demand that Washington lift financial restrictions on the communist regime for its alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.
North Korea has cited the financial issue in boycotting nuclear talks with China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US The talks last convened in November.
The official also dismissed moves at the UN Security Council to sanction the communist nation over its reported nuclear test.
"We have lost enough. Sanctions can never be a solution," the official said.
"We still have a willingness to give up nuclear weapons and return to six-party talks as well. It's possible whenever the US takes corresponding measures."
Pyongyang declared yesterday that it had successfully tested a nuclear bomb.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Sounds more like a veiled attempt at nuclear blackmail to me. The ronery one is now claiming that he'll shoot a nuclear tipped missile at us if we don't talk to him one on one. This is much like a child that desperately needs to be taken to the woodshed for an attitude adjustment. I say we station a couple of carrier battle groups around the peninsula, including a few extra Trident subs for good measure, and see what the little commie has to say then. One on one......
At this point we can even speculate that Kim bought a Hush-A-Bomb from Boris and Natasha.
...and that wily Murtha was right...think of how close Okinawa is to North Korea! He saw it coming...is Karl Rove working for him, too?!? ;-)
"You read my mind. Just this morning, I was thinking since Clintons offered North Korea and Iran the same deal ($1bn for nuclear reactors) and since they did not observe whether compliance was occurring or not, is it possible that they thought that North Korea and Iran should have nukes?"
I copied these off of another FR NK thread.
1993 : (DISASTEROUS CLINTON ADMINISTRATION TEST BAN TREATY POLICY MAKES NUCLEAR INFORMATION PUBLIC, WOULD RESULT IN PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY - See ENERGY DEPARTMENT "OPENNESS INITIATIVE," HAZEL O'LEARY ) Back in 1993, when the terrors of the Cold War were still fresh, the administration decided that the best way to keep the nuclear arms race from heating up again was to get the world's nations to sign a test-ban treaty. The idea was that even if a country knew how to make a bomb, it couldn't perfect new ones and build up advanced forces without physically testing new designs. So development of new weapons would be frozen, ending the vicious spiral of nuclear move and countermove.
Releasing many of America's nuclear secrets was seen as an essential part of this strategy, since it would signal a new global order in which nuclear know-how was suddenly and irreparably devalued and real security would lie in the collective knowledge that nobody was able to push weaponry beyond the known boundaries.
What had been gold would become dross, and the atom would lose power and prestige. Driven by such logic, the administration made public masses of generalities about nuclear arms, even as specific weapon designs were kept secret.
... Since 1993, officials say, the Energy Department's "openness initiative" has released at least 178 categories of atom secrets. By contrast, the 1980s saw two such actions. The unveilings have included no details of specific weapons, like the W-88, a compact design Chinese spies are suspected of having stolen from the weapons lab at Los Alamos, N.M. But they include a slew of general secrets. ... the disclosures... such things as how atom bombs can be boosted in power, key steps in making hydrogen bombs, the minimum amount (8.8 pounds) of plutonium or uranium fuel needed for an atom bomb and the maximum time it takes an exploding atomic bomb to ignite an H-bomb's hydrogen fuel (100 millionths of a second). No grade-B physicist from any university could figure this stuff. It took decades of experience gained at a cost of more than $400 billion.
The release of the secrets started as a high-stakes bet that openness would lessen, not increase, the world's vulnerability to nuclear arms and war. - "Spying Isn't the Only Way to Learn About Nukes," By WILLIAM J. BROAD, the New York Times, May 30, 1999.
As if they weren't working on it prior to that.
I noted this morning that CBS News has trotted out a "former defense department official" who says that Bush provoked NK into building a weapon with the "axis of evil" speech. A coordinated media attack?
Uh, we'll get back to you...after we've found some way to neuter you.
People live in Nagasaki, you know.
I agree. The more time elapses, the more this whole incident stinks like Limberger. My gut tells me he either detonated a sh*tload of TNT to simulate a nuke, or his baby fizzled, (I hope!).
Either way, he rearranged a lot of NK dirt and got all the diplo-dunks knickers in a twist. He's also validated President Bush's assessment of NK as part of the "axis of evil".
Now, Kim throws another tantrum to wring further concessions from the US? A con-game indeed.
If he's not careful, Beijing is going to arrange for him to have an "accident". He's becoming inconvenient.
Actually, just the opposite. It is a battlefield tactical weapon with a low yield blast that emits large doses of neutron energy on the target with minimal amounts of long lived fission byproducts. The idea is to kill people (and other living things) but not cause long term radioactivity at the blast site allowing troops to safely enter the area after a few days. If anything, it's a "clean" bomb. ;~(
See Neutron Bomb
Eyes roll to ceiling.
ROFLMAO.
No way Jose.
i think it was actually one of the dreaded positronic bombs they set off... much more deadly.
I guess we need to watch for a large order of Viagra from PoonTang...er... Pyongyang.
"Would you believe, Diet Coke and Mentos?"
A nuclear bomb exploded literally at ground level is totally something else, though. When the bomb explodes, it carves out a large blast crater, sending hundreds of tons of lethally radioactive debris into the air that will be deadly to anyone exposed for at least a couple of days. The remaining surface of the blast crater is also lethally radioactive for a long time. Why do you think before they repopulated Enewetak Island they literally had to cover over most of the island in heavy cement to cover the highly-radioactive coral left from the various test explosions there?
Nagasaki was an air burst. The closer the bomb is to the ground, the dirtier it is.
Good explanation! Beat me by 17 secs.
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