Word: yongbyon
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...North Korea Disarm-Twisting On June 27, Pyongyang demolished the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor after the U.S. said it would remove North Korea from a list of terrorism-sponsoring countries if it continues dismantling its nuclear program...
...What the U.S. did get, though, was real progress on a long-standing aim - the destruction of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, where North Korea's plutonium has been produced. The 1994 deal agreed by the Clinton Administration required that nuclear work at Yongbyon be verifiably frozen, but the new deal requires that the plant be incapacitated. On Friday the North Koreans blew up the facility's cooling tower and they have also committed to destroying, under international monitoring, the other functioning parts of the plant...
...Gary Samore of the Council on Foreign Relations, who negotiated the agreed framework in 1994 for President Clinton, says the new North Korean deal gets more than what he got on Yongbyon. "The Bush Administration has achieved an additional measure beyond what the Clinton Administration achieved in terms of Yongbyon ... a very, very substantial disablement which would make it difficult and time-consuming for the North Koreans to resume production." Says his Council colleague Charles Ferguson, "The Bush Administration has achieved more than the Clinton Administration in terms of really doing a substantial amount of disablement of that facility...
...when Kim tested a nuclear weapon, precisely the opposite of the result Bush intended. Since then, the Administration has tried bribery, offering blandishments like free food and fuel oil in hopes that North Korea would stand down its nuclear program. Kim has responded a bit - his nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which produced the fissile material for the North's estimated eight to 10 nuclear bombs, is being shut down. But Kim has refused to detail, as he had promised to do, other components of his nuclear program, including an alleged uranium-enrichment effort. And it has become clearer that...
...commitments in the so-called six-party talks (with the U.S., China, Russia, Japan and South Korea). In an April 24 presentation in Washington, the Administration produced damning photographic evidence that North Korea was deeply involved in helping Syria build a plutonium nuclear reactor, "basically a copy of Yongbyon," as one Bush official...