Word: pyongyang
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...diplomat Daniel Jackson, "Not only do you have to enjoy banging your head against a wall, you have to feel vaguely guilty about it on those rare occasions when you don't, in fact, have a headache." With the dramatic, surprise trip by U.S. envoy Christopher Hill to Pyongyang after the regime's promise about nuclear inspection - all part of a recent slew of backing-and-forthing between the Hermit Kingdom and the rest of the world - there is a lot of head-banging nowadays among that small band of masochists...
...That's problem number one. If North Korea ever attacked a U.S. or South Korean base in the South, Pyongyang would be incinerated in response, and the reunification of the peninsula will have begun. Al-Qaeda, however, isn't a country; it's a global terrorist group. It had something of a return address in Afghanistan, but doesn't now. According to U.S. military intelligence, it has cells in more than 70 countries, and at this point there seems to be no lack of radicals from the Islamic world to take the place of al-Qaeda fighters who are killed...
...Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson, who had just returned from Pyongyang late last week after securing the return of remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the Korean war, said on ABC's Sunday talk show, This Week that "the nuclear card is their biggest asset so they're going to play it to the hilt." But Richardson also said he believed that the North Koreans have "made the strategic decision" to abandon their weapons program...
...funds in dispute, so if that's really the reason for the North's delay, Hill said, "if it's going to get resolved, then it certainly can be resolved very soon." Which leaves open the possibility that it won't be resolved because that's not in Pyongyang's interest. As Hill put it, "The ball is in the North Koreans' court...
...However, since Beijing is the only nation that exercises real economic leverage over Pyongyang, the ball is really in China's court...