Word: yongbyon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Earlier this week, North Korea announced to great fanfare that it would, in fact, do what it agreed to do back in February at the so called Six Party Talks in Beijing: allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the shutdown of the controversial Yongbyon reactor. That has helped put the optimists in the Kim club in the ascendant. Indeed, Hill's trip to Pyongyang on Thursday, the first high-level mission by a U.S. official there in more than four years, seemed designed to take advantage of the positive opening. A statement from Hill read...
Speed may be of the essence since such opportunities are often tentative, what with the way the U.S. and Kim have careened from one extreme of the diplomatic spectrum to the other. During the Clinton Administration, Washington contemplated air strikes on Yongbyon; then, a few years later, sent its Secretary of State to toast Kim with champagne. Early in the Bush Administration, it was back to war preparations and talk of a "strangulation strategy"; now, again, the full diplomatic embrace is on. U.S. envoy Christopher Hill made a surprise trip to Pyongyang on Thursday - the highest-ranking U.S. official...
...moment of truth of sorts will arrive soon enough: if Kim verifiably shuts down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor - a process that is supposed to begin later this summer - he will, in fact have given up something that the pessimists have always believed has been critical to him: his nuclear card, which in his view has guaranteed his regime's survival in the post-Sept. 11, preemptive world. Give that up, and the optimists will have a reason to smile, even if they are members of the Masochists Club...
...number of things were supposed to happen in 60 days, and those things have not happened," Hill said. "We don't have Yongbyon nuclear facilities shut down; we don't have them monitored with international observers. We do not have any fuel oil delivered to [North Korea]." South Korea was standing by, Hill said, to deliver 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to Pyongyang, the agreed-upon reward for decommissioning the reactor, in preparation for the second, more ambitious phase of the disarmament deal. If the Kim Jong Il regime makes good on its word to dismantle its weapons...
...Bush Administration is struggling to downplay North Korea's refusal to honor its agreement to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which is producing plutonium that the regime has used to make nuclear weapons. "You know, we have a plan," a senior State Department official told reporters almost plaintively, after Pyongyang missed the 60-day deadline that ran out Saturday. "We're just a little delayed in the timing here and we're going to try to work with the partners in the next few days to get it back on track...