Page 2 of 2 North Korea hawks down but
not out By Donald Kirk
the uranium issue in whatever declaration emerges on the extent of its nuclear
program.
As for Hill, he has said repeatedly that all he wanted was for North Korea to
"come clean" about all its nuclear activities - a stance that seemed far less
threatening than that adopted by the US in October 2002. It was then that
Hill's predecessor, James Kelly, claimed that North Korea's deputy foreign
minister, Kang Seok-ju, acknowledged, in their meeting in Pyongyang, a program
to
enrich uranium.
That admission set off the chain reaction that blew apart the 1994 Geneva
Framework Agreement under which North Korea had stopped developing warheads
with plutonium produced at Yongbyon in return for the promise of twin
light-water nuclear reactors to help fulfill its energy needs.
It was after the US stopped shipping heavy oil, part of the 1994 deal, that
North Korea kicked out inspectors from the IAEA at the end of 2002. Just what
Kang did say, and how he said it, has been the topic of dispute ever since.
There is no recording or transcript of the dialogue - surprising for such a
momentous get-together.
Nor is the ruckus over uranium the only issue over which Americans, if they are
to go on with what many view as the charade of getting North Korea to begin to
live up to the latest agreement, are executing a climbdown. There's also the
matter of about US$24 million tied up in an obscure bank in Macau - Banco Delta
Asia.
After the US Treasury Department, in late 2005, blacklisted the bank as a
conduit for counterfeit US$100 bills printed in Pyongyang, banning US firms
from any dealings with firms that did any business with the bank, Macau
authorities froze all North Korean accounts, an order that stopped its
financial activities worldwide, since no one else would have anything to do
with North Korea either.
In the process of warming over Pyongyang, however, the Treasury Department is
reviewing the whole topic, now saying that some of the funds were not held by
the North Korean government but by companies doing business in North Korea,
notably a British-run bank whose accounts include foreign embassies and
companies in Pyongyang.
Again Hill was the point man, suggesting that now that North Korea had learned
its lesson, the Treasury people were now ready "to resolve the matter". The
issue of counterfeit funds was nowhere in the February 13 agreement, but
there's no way North Korea will do anything until the US gives up on that issue
too.
The new agreement, forced on the US by South Korea and China in their desire to
bring about a compromise, postpones the awful possibility of a second Korean
war through a carefully contrived series of stages in which the bait is
shipment of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of heavy fuel oil in tandem with
the shutdown of the Yongbyon complex.
But what if North Korea throws up reasons for postponing the "dismantlement" of
the Yongbyon facilities - and still refuses to get around to acknowledging,
much less stopping, the uranium program, presumably still going on at secret
bases scattered around the country?
One fear in Seoul is that the United States, especially if the administration
has yielded to rising political pressures and withdrawn most of its troops from
Iraq, might then turn to Korea as the next front in the "global war on
terrorism".
As far as Koreans are concerned, US responses can be both unpredictable and
violent. True, the current Republican administration will probably have been
displaced by a Democratic one by the time tensions reach such a point on the
Korean Peninsula as seriously to suggest the second Korean war is about to
break out.
No one can predict, however, who might be the next US president - a potentially
warlike Hillary Clinton or an almost pacifist Barack Obama - and how that
president might respond if confronted with an intransigent North Korea mingling
menacing moves with rhetorical riffs.
Nor do many Koreans see a great deal of difference between the likely responses
of a Democratic or Republican US administration. The Korean War broke out when
a Democrat, Harry Truman, was president and did not end until after the
election of a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, who had run on the pledge, "I will
go to Korea."
If George W Bush's greatest success was the invasion of Iraq, with the
hubristic claim, "Mission Accomplished" emblazoned on an aircraft carrier after
he had landed in full pilot's regalia, might his successor want to prove her or
his machismo with a military campaign to wipe out North Korea's nukes?
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