Word: pyongyang
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...Even as the two presidents met at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Tuesday, Bush's top negotiator on North Korea was 12 time zones away in Beijing for a new round of six-party talks on Pyongyang?s nuclear weapons program. The objective of those talks is not only to stop North Korea's declared weapons program, but also to dismantle the estimated seven weapons that Pyongyang has already built - the U.S. wants to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but hasn't made much progress. The last round of talks ended early last month with...
...time to grant an honorable burial to the six-party talks was June 2004, at the end of the third round. At that session, North Korea categorically rejected the U.S.-backed objective of "complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization." Pyongyang countered with its own preferred resolution, which would provide the North with energy and other aid, plus security guarantees and diplomatic recognition, in return for freezing its nuclear programs. Because that proposed freeze covered only plutonium-based weapons (Pyongyang has never publicly acknowledged its secret uranium-enrichment program), North Korea's proposal amounted to international payments for a temporary?and only...
...Under such circumstances, meaningful discussions were impossible. But not even the supposedly unilateralist Bush Administration was willing to declare the talks finished. So Pyongyang was free to press ahead in its race to develop and amass nuclear weapons, confident that it would be able to return to "denuclearization" discussions at a time of Kim Jong Il's own choosing. North Korea finally agreed in June to go back to the table, but only after a promise of half a million tons of free rice from South Korea. And in the months leading up to the current talks, North Korea...
...Once the fourth round got under way, it quickly became apparent that Pyongyang's position had not changed. Denuclearization, in any normal meaning of the term, was not going to be on the agenda. Never mind the secret uranium program that Pyongyang still publicly avers is nonexistent. North Korea says it will not sign a joint statement endorsing eventual denuclearization because it wishes to preserve the option of peaceful nuclear-power development. Instead, the North has tried to turn the talks into an international forum on U.S. military disengagement from South Korea. Although Washington has not based nuclear weapons...
...time has come for the U.S., which acts as a regional balancer in North Asia, to provide some balance. The first step: the U.S. should declare the bankruptcy of the six-party process. Then Washington should impose real-time penalties on Pyongyang, the world's most aggressive and flagrant nuclear proliferator. The Bush Administration recently finalized its North Korea dream team of diplomats with John Bolton's appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The roster is now in place for the administration's hard-liners to move beyond the gab factory...