Word: pyongyang
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...give such prerogative to the IAEA. So, while I readily admit that the IAEA did not see it, it was the result of a system that was not sufficiently strong. Criticizing the IAEA over North Korea is totally misguided. It was the IAEA that triggered the crisis [over Pyongyang's nuclear program in 1994], because we discovered ... that the North Koreans had reprocessed more plutonium than they had declared...
...showing signs of opening the North's barbed-wire gates, economically and diplomatically. He edged in the direction of primitive market reforms and announced a grandiose scheme for a private-enterprise zone along the border with China. Just as intriguing was the sudden burst of sunshine from Pyongyang diplomats as they clamored to hold talks with Seoul, Tokyo and even Washington. Soon after a shoot-out with Seoul's patrol boats that left five dead, the North scheduled its first tete-a-tete with the South in nine months...
...drab cities are grandiose statues of Kim Il Sung. Hospitals have no heat, no disinfectant, no anesthetic, no rubber gloves. Kim devotes nearly a third of North Korea's GDP to military spending, and finances ridiculous Pharaonic projects, such as the 105-story Ryugyong hotel that towers unfinished over Pyongyang...
...White House sees a possible opening for a form of coercive diplomacy, with which Washington would convince North Koreans that, as a top White House aide puts it, "they will pay too heavy a price if they pursue this nuclear approach." The 1994 framework is effectively dead. Pyongyang can no longer sell off its threats piecemeal. New U.S. demands will sweep across the spectrum of security issues, including a pullback of conventional forces from the DMZ. If Kim doesn't buckle, Washington will make its weight felt by cutting off outside aid except for humanitarian assistance. The risk, warns Gary...
Bush hopes the threat of a nuclear North Korea will galvanize South Korea, Japan, China and Russia to join the U.S. in a united front that can pressure Pyongyang to disarm. They have never agreed, however, on the best way to end North Korea's isolation. "The diplomacy of this is tricky," says the Bush aide. Yet the implications of confrontation show negotiations have got to be tried. --Reported by Donald Macintyre/Seoul, J.F.O. McAllister/London and Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington