Word: agreement
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...Bush's critics see it, that's where the latest disarmament deal falls short. Former Clinton Administration officials say the agreement is a close facsimile of the Agreed Framework signed by Washington and Pyongyang in 1994. That deal called for the North to halt nuclear-weapons development in return for two light-water nuclear-power plants, which are difficult to use to generate fissile material for bombs. Clinton's presidency ended before the power plants could be completed and the projects today are derelict-evidence, in Pyongyang's eyes, of Washington's bad faith. But those who defend the Agreed...
...Most of the deal's critics, in fact, concede that it is at least better than the status quo: a North Korea bent on producing more weapons. Former Clinton negotiator Dan Poneman likened the latest agreement to putting a "tourniquet" on the plutonium program. If the Yongbyon reactor is shut down, the North's ability to make more plutonium-fueled nukes is crippled. And although Pyongyang has not agreed to dismantle its nuclear program, a path for further negotiations has been set. This is likely the best deal the U.S. could get right now, and the fact that Bush...
...Unfortunately, it does neither. The current agreement simply brings us back to the position in which the Bush Administration criticized the Clinton team for leaving us: freezing and monitoring the Yongbyon facilities without ensuring their complete dismantlement. In fact, we are actually worse off than when the Agreed Framework was signed, as North Korea has used the past five years of wrangling to expand its nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, a deal is a deal, and better than no deal at all. Never mind that this week's agreement is silent on Pyongyang's uranium enrichment, an issue that precipitated the current...
...said later. He wasn't the only one losing sleep. His boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, phoned him at 4:15 in the morning Washington time to go over final details, checking in with Hill for the 12th time in three days. "He thought he had a tentative agreement," she told reporters Tuesday, "but I called him ... to make sure...
...always the hardest part. Since 1994, when the Clinton Administration cajoled Pyongyang into promising to abandon its nuclear-weapons program, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has repeatedly made and then reneged on such accords. For the Bush Administration, whose officials had once speculated openly about regime change, the agreement signed on Feb. 13 represented a marked shift to diplomacy. But have the U.S. and its four negotiating partners--South Korea, China, Russia and Japan--laid a solid foundation for eliminating Kim Jong Il's nuclear arsenal? Or is this agreement, as one former U.S. negotiator puts it, "just another...