Word: pyongyang
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...time Baker arrived in Beijing on Friday, his meetings in other Asian capitals had turned North Korea's nuclear weapons program into the most prominent topic on his agenda. Experts say Pyongyang is probably producing plutonium and might have enough for a bomb within two to five years. American officials said they hoped to enlist China, Japan and the Soviet Union in a joint effort to push North Korea out of the nuclear field...
...call for North Korea to halt its weapons program "does not necessarily involve pressure." He hoped to handle the problem "politically and diplomatically," he said. Beijing seemed to be preparing to tell Baker that China, not the U.S., should take the lead on this. The Chinese want to keep Pyongyang from getting the bomb, but they also want Korea to remain divided so they will not have to compete with a vibrant new economy on their border. Most of all, they want to prevent the U.S. from dominating Asian regional affairs...
South Koreans will also be happy. The Seoul government's top priority is to stop the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea. Pyongyang has signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty but refused to open its facilities to international inspection until American nukes are removed from South Korea. Bush's move will go a long way to deprive North Korea of that excuse...
...pact, as 142 now are, must agree with the IAEA on terms for inspection of all their nuclear facilities. But North Korea, which signed the treaty in 1985, has never concluded a full-scope inspection pact, and South Korean President Roh Tae Woo charged last week that Pyongyang has tested nuclear detonators. South Africa, widely believed to have the Bomb, announced last week its intention to sign the treaty and will now have to open its facilities to inspection. Countries that do not sign the treaty on occasion agree to have the U.N. group monitor some of their nuclear plants...
...Pyongyang's decision to join the U.N. is a glaring admission that its isolationist policy has been checkmated by Seoul's smooth cultivation of North Korea's main patrons, Moscow and Beijing. Anxious to extend burgeoning economic ties with capitalist -- and prosperous -- South Korea, neither the Soviet Union nor China is eager to oppose South Korea's application for U.N. membership, leaving North Korea little choice but to seek a seat as well...