Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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After a recent speech in Washington, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was asked which was harder: negotiating with Pyongyang or trying to forge a coherent North Korea policy within the Bush Administration. Hill laughed, but it was no joke. More than five years and one North Korean nuclear test after George W. Bush said he "loathed" Kim Jong Il, the U.S. stance toward Pyongyang has now flip-flopped. No longer is Washington trying to isolate the dictator's rogue regime. Instead, on March 5 and 6 Hill held talks with the North's Vice Foreign Minister...
...since Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright flew to Pyongyang and offered a champagne toast to Kim has Washington's embrace of his regime been tighter. The cranked-up diplomacy was set in motion by the recent breakthrough in the six-party talks aimed at getting the North to end its nuclear-weapons program. Last month, North Korea struck a deal with the U.S., South Korea, China, Japan and Russia to shut down its Yongbyon reactor, which produces the plutonium material necessary to make nukes, in return for a variety of economic and diplomatic benefits, including an emergency...
...policy toward North Korea has now officially flip-flopped: A little over five years ago, President Bush declared an end to the Clinton-era policy of offering inducements for good behavior by the North Koreans, questioning whether Pyongyang could be trusted to keep a deal. But this week's talks between the two sides show that Washington's diplomatic embrace of Pyongyang is tighter than at any point since then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright offered a champagne toast to the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il in late...
...recent appearance in Washington, lead U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill was asked, facetiously, which was harder: negotiating with Pyongyang or within the Administration to get a "coherent" policy on North Korea. Hill laughed, but it was no joke. Those in the Administration who have argued for a strategy of engagement rather than isolation appear to be ascendant, particularly since the most recent round of Six-Party talks in Beijing on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. There, North Korea agreed to shut down its Yongbon nuclear reactor, which produces the fissile material for its nuclear weapons, in exchange for a variety...
...some point, presumably, those steps will raise the increasingly puzzling question of the North's other nuclear program, the one that allegedly makes bombs out of highly enriched uranium rather than plutonium. When the U.S. confronted Pyongyang in late 2002 with intelligence about this program, U.S. diplomats say Pyongyang confirmed its existence and then stormed out of the talks. Since then, the North has denied the existence of a uranium bomb program. And last week, a key intelligence official in Washington stunned a Senate panel by testifying that analysts now only had a "mid-confidence level" about the program...