Category: Six-Party Talks

It took the Annapolis Summit — not North Korea — to galavanize conservative suspicions about Secretary Rice and our State Department.  That part of the world doesn’t interest me much because I wrote it off as hopeless after visiting it in 1990 (I mean the Middle East, not  Annapolis).  My few days in Israel and a  Hamas-controlled village in  East Jerusalem have persuaded me that there isn’t going to be peace there until the Palestinians make the fundamental decision that...

Update:   A reader was kind enough to send a copy of the latest six-party joint statement, which you can read here.   Some of the key langugage: 2. The DPRK agreed to provide a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs in accordance with the February 13 agreement by 31 December 2007. A deadline.  I like deadlines.  But  this adds no clarity  that nuclear “programs” means nuclear “weapons,” and nothing about inspection or verification beyond Yongbyon. 3. The...

Update:   Woohoo!   They agreed to full disclosure again, for the second time in six months!   Thanks to the brilliant diplomacy  of our State Department, we can actually  bask in the afterglow of the same breakthrough twice a year!   It’s twice the  feelgood for the price!   At least, until someone leaks that we had to pay another price …. [Hill]  said he and Kim had discussed a range of issues in their two days of talks...

Two days ago, I posted about a Tokyo Shimbun report that the North Koreans said they’d only include three sites around Yongbyon in their disclosure. If true, that means the North Koreans have renounced this deal, and it’s game over. Also two days ago, Chris Hill held an on-the-record briefing at the State Department, and Chris Hill’s skill at schmoozing a mostly admiring media while telling them (and us) almost nothing was a wonder to see. There’s no money quote...

A Japanese newspaper on Saturday said North Korea insisted in disarmament talks this month that it would only declare and disable three nuclear facilities — none of them with atomic weapons. All three sites are in the immediate vicinity of the nearly used-up Yongbyon reactor, which North Korea finally shut down (but never disabled) last month, several months after  the date it  had agreed to do so.   You can see  Google Earth images of some of those facilities  here. But...