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Category: Proliferation

April 9, 2008

Did North Korea proliferate to Iran, too?

An Israeli news site reports that North Korea aided Iran’s nuclear program with nuclear technology and material, according to the Israeli news site Haaretz (ht to a reader): According to information obtained by Washington and Jerusalem, North Korea transferred technology and nuclear materials to Iran to aid Tehran’s secret nuclear arms program. U.S. and Israeli officials agreed last week that the talks between the U.S. and North Korea, scheduled to take place in Singapore tomorrow, should be used to pressure...

Categories Proliferation/WMD
April 7, 2008

China Steps Up Efforts to Undermine U.S. and U.N. Sanctions Against N. Korea

The single most important provision of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, for which China cast a disingenuous “yes” vote, is the provision that requires member states to “ensure” that funds flowing into North Korea are not used for its WMD programs. Similarly, Resolution 1695 requires states to “exercise vigilance” against efforts to fund U.N. sanctions. Now, in the wake of U.S. Treasury sanctions that have put the North Korean regime under unprecedented pressure to meet its disarmament obligations, China is...

Categories China/China & Korea/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/WMD
April 1, 2008

Oh, You Meant Those Nuclear Scientists in Syria ….

You have to wonder what Chris Hill thought this inspired move would accomplish, other than to put  intelligence sources and methods at risk:  The U.S. in recent bilateral talks reportedly gave Pyongyang a list of North Korean officials involved in the supply of nuclear technology to Syria, a suspicion the North denies. A high-level diplomatic source on Monday said that the U.S. obtained the list of officials including nuclear engineers, who were involved in the supply of nuclear technology to...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
March 24, 2008

WaPo Columnist Reveals NK-Syria Nuclear Agreement

In yesterday’s Washington Post, David Ignatius wrote a column pining for  a “breakthrough” in Chris Hill’s failed Agreed Framework 2.0.  Ignatius defines that as getting our hands on 30-40 kilograms of North Korean plutonium, which happens to  coincide with  North Korea’s own  low-range estimate.  Hill has been eager to accept this lower figure in the interests of declaring victory, although some U.S. estimates have put the actual figure closer to 50 kilograms.  The discrepancy is enough for a couple of...

Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 23, 2008

I Know a Dead Parrot When I See One

This  parrot is no more.  It has ceased to be.  It has expired and gone to meet its maker.  This … is a late parrot.  It’s a stiff.  Bereft of life, it rests in peace.  If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies.  It’s  run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.  This … is an ex-parrot! — John Cleese, Monty Python’s “The Dead Parrot Sketch“ I confess to being less interested...

Categories Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
March 11, 2008

Six Two Party Talks: Doubling Down a Bad Bet?

Back on February 23rd, I predicted that we’d see the first signs that the Bush Administration was losing patience with North Korea’s stall tactics. I also predicted that this recognition would amount to little in practice. Things seems to be turning out pretty much as expected. United States Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said … there is a ‘sense of impatience building up’ among participants in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program over the long delay by...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
March 8, 2008

That’s funny. I thought they were building a baby milk factory.

North Korea admitted to sending engineers to military-related and other facilities in Syria during its recent talks with the United States over its nuclear program, diplomatic sources in New York said Friday.  Pyongyang, however, denied its involvement in Syrian nuclear development, according to the sources.  [Kyodo News] If you say so.  Could this be the beginning of a half-assed “declaration,” no doubt scrawled out on the back of a bar napkin? (Hat tip to a friend.) Update:   Andy Jackson...

Categories Proliferation
February 23, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0: The Shelf Life of Happy Talk

There are probably several good reasons I’ve never really enjoyed a musical except while looking at the lovely France Nuyen, who does not sing. If legacy was its object, Agreed Framework 2.0 won’t be a positive contribution to one. President Bush must know this, or he would have mentioned it in his State of the Union speech. Events turned against the agreement during the last quarter of 2007: specifically Syria, uranium, North Korea’s false declaration, and its failure to give...

Categories Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
February 13, 2008

Six months later, deafening silence about North Korea and Syria

Last Sunday, a friend invited me to attend an event at Bethel Israel Synagogue in Alexandria. The subject was “The North Korea-Syria Connection,” although the event seems not to have caught the notice of many Korea watchers or journalists. I was invited by a friend who happens to attend the synagogue. The host was NPR’s Robert Siegel, and the guests were Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post and Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times. Kessler consistently toes the State...

Categories Proliferation/Washington Views
February 7, 2008

U-Tubed, Part 4

Commenter ChosunHapa was kind enough to drop some links to Chris Hill’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday (transcript / video). Hill says that the “disablement” of (some of) North Korea’s nuclear facilities is proceeding well, contrary to what other reports tell us. He also assures us of his grave concern about Japanese abductees and human rights … which we’ll pursue on a separate track of course, after Kim Jong Il has what he wants from us....

Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
February 6, 2008

Diplomacy as Terrorism: North Korea Threatens America With Indirect Nuclear Attack

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday, J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, delivered his annual threat assessment.  Here are some highlights; all emphasis is mine: Despite halting progress towards denuclearization, North Korea continues to maintain nuclear weapons; Here’s the section that describes the North Korean threat in greater detail:

Categories Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)
February 5, 2008

Seymour Hersh on North Korea, Syria, and Proliferation

Speaking of Syria and what the hell actually happened there, there’s a detailed  new piece of investigative journalism that prints out to eight pages, and which will do virtually nothing to answer that question but does pick at the scabs of the various theories articulated in this factual vacuum (Here’s a run-down of those theories; here’s one more).  I will tell you up front that I have some major problems with this piece: 1.  Seymour Hersh wrote it. 2.  Its...

Categories Proliferation
January 26, 2008

Fox: White House May Accept Incomplete N. Korean Declaration

“Foreign diplomatic sources” have told Fox News that Chris Hill has floated the idea of accepting a declaration that omits information about North Korea’s proliferation — to Syria, for  instance —  or its suspected uranium enrichment programs. With North Korea almost a month overdue on its obligation to provide a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs and materiel, the Bush administration — under increasing pressure from American conservatives to take a harder line with Pyongyang, or abandon the...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
January 7, 2008

North Korea’s Moment of Untruth, and Chris Hill’s

Secretary Rice, embrace your legacy. Agreed Framework 2.0 has stalled, and probably for good. Last month, we thought we were approaching North Korea’s moment of truth. Last week, with the matter of that overdue declaration, it was still possible (though gullible) to believe they’d still offer it in due course. Certainly that was the impression the White House was feeding us when it said on January 3rd that it was “going to keep hammering away” at getting the declaration and...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
January 2, 2008

U-Tubed! (Part. 3)

Washington has long suspected North Korea of having a program to make highly enriched uranium (HEU) since shortly after it agreed to denuclearize in the first Agreed Framework.  North Korea  denied this at first, admitted it to two U.S. diplomats and three translators in 2002, and  then went  back to denying it.    Those denials  just got even less likely. As I previously noted here,  the U.S. asked for, and North Korea recently provided, samples of aluminum tubes we know it...

Categories Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
January 1, 2008

2007: A Lost Year

[Update 2 Jan 08: “North Korea failed to fulfill its October promise to declare all its nuclear programs by the end of 2007 — and the United States did not make a big deal out of it.” — WaPo, Blaine Harden] SO ENDS THE YEAR 2007, with this terse statement from the State Department spokesman: In September 2005, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea agreed on a Joint Statement with North Korea that charted the way forward...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
December 21, 2007

U-Tubed! Enriched uranium found on N. Korean sample

Say it aint so. U.S. scientists have discovered traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing provided by North Korea, apparently contradicting Pyongyang’s denial that it had a clandestine nuclear program, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources. [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler] But where and when did we find this incriminating sample? The United States has long pointed to North Korea’s acquisition of thousands of aluminum tubes as evidence of such a program, saying the tubes could be used as the...

Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
December 21, 2007

U-Tubed, Part 2

[Part 1] An honest appraisal of this new discovery means that those of us who are skeptical of AF 2.0 should grudgingly admit that it has produced at least one significant intelligence windfall, even if it was due to a North Korean oversight. Since that oversight will probably land a few people in front of firing squads, AF 2.0 proponents should at least draw the obvious conclusions to which this new intelligence leads. It seems difficult to deny that AF...

Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks