Open Sources: China blocks U.N. report on NK uranium program

Guess which responsible rising power is enabling Kim Jong Il again?

China has told U.N. Security Council members it plans to block publication of a U.N. special report that accuses North Korea of violating sanctions on its nuclear program, Western diplomats said. [….]

Diplomats told Reuters that China informed council members it would block the publication and transfer of the report to the full council. They said China’s move was odd since one of the experts who prepared the report, Xiaodong Xue, is Chinese.

I sure hope Mr. Xue’s family isn’t in China right now.

The panel’s report, which was seen by Reuters, says that North Korea almost certainly has several more undisclosed enrichment-related facilities. It also says that Pyongyang’s uranium enrichment program and its development of a light-water reactor are serious violations of U.N. sanctions. [….]

The panel also voiced concern that North Korea might “transfer fissile materials or the means of producing them” to foreign countries due to its shortage of hard currency. The panel has previously suggested that Pyongyang may have aided Syria, Myanmar and Iran with nuclear or missile technology.

The panel concluded that the North’s enrichment program, which Pyongyang says it began in April 2009, must have been developed much earlier, over the course of “several years or decades” and appears mainly to be for military purposes.

In February 2005, Selig Harrison alleged “that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the data” about North Korea’s uranium enrichment program to scuttle the first Agreed Framework. In August 2009, Harrison told an Associated Press reporter that, “Everything I’ve ever said about North Korea since 1972 has seemed at the time like screaming into the wilderness, and everything I’ve ever advocated has come to pass.

And since you may also be reading, Mr. Chinoy, isn’t it time for you, too, to concede that critics of both agreed frameworks were right after all?

Whatever you think motivated the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong attacks, I see no sign that those motivations have changed. Hence, I wouldn’t discount this:

North Korea may stage another attack “in months and not years,” said Navy Admiral Robert Willard, the top U.S. commander in the Pacific.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il appears to be training his son “on a compressed timeline” in “coercive measures” like the attacks last year that killed 46 sailors on the South Korean Cheonan warship and four people on the island of Yeonpyeong, Willard told a forum sponsored by the Asia Society in Washington today.

“We may very well be facing the next provocation in months and not years,” Willard said in remarks that also touched on China and Southeast Asia.

Who the hell still believes this crap?

A “big and bright halo” floated above Mt Paektu, revered by North Korea as the sacred birthplace of leader Kim Jong-il, to mark his birthday on Wednesday, state media reported.

KCNA news agency, the secretive state’s main news outlet and renowned for its colorful propaganda, said the “mysterious natural wonder” occurred at the break of dawn.

“The bright sun rose up, throwing its brilliant rays and the area of the Paektusan Secret Camp turned into a fascinating picturesque of spring. Then rarely big and bright halo persisted in the sky above Jong Il Peak for an hour, starting at 09:30,” it said.

I doubt anyone in North Korea believes this, including the people who write it. The only purpose for forcing people mouth this nonsense is intellectual subjugation — a rape of the human mind that crushes hope and self-worth.

A BBC video report on the deteriorating food situation in North Korea. But really, is the situation this year really any different from the grim indications we see around this time every year? With North Korea, it’s always something.

North Korea has completed its missile launch site on its West coast.