No Middle Ground
It's like dealing with two boorish jerks with the same sense of humor. The parameters of what North Korean and conservative Americans consider fair game for negotiations is a high-wire act.
The United States said last week Pyongyang's move to stop taking the Yongbyon facility apart was a step backward and reiterated North Korea must disable its facilities before it is removed from the terrorism blacklist that restricts investment.
«It is a violation of their commitments to the six-party framework. It certainly is in violation of the principle of action for action,» State Department spokesman Robert Wood told Reuters at the time.
Engineers, working since late last year and mostly overseen by U.S. experts, have almost completed disabling the Yongbyon nuclear plant. The aim is to make it impossible to resume operations for at least a year.
But analysts have said that any North Korea threat to restart its plant that makes arms-grade plutonium was feasible, although the task would be a daunting one.
The North's announcement last week confirmed the belief of some analysts that its communist leaders have no intention of giving up nuclear weapons, a diplomatic trump card that has repeatedly won them concessions in the past.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Sphere: Related Content
Barrapunto
CoRank Español
Delicious
Enchílame
Fresqui Ocio
Furl
Google Bookmarks
Menéame
Netscape
Newsvine
Stumbleupon
Technorati Favorites
Yahoo MyWeb
Write a comment
No trackbacks
RSS 2.0
Bloglines
Live
MyAOL
Netvibes
Newsgator
Rojo
Write a comment
If you want to add your comment on this post, simply fill out the next form:
* Required fields
You can use these XHTML tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>.
No comments
Be the first to write a comment on this post.
No trackbacks
To notify a mention on this post in your blog, enable automated notification (Options > Discussion in WordPress) or specify this trackback url: http://www.radicalcontrapositions.com/left_flank/2008/09/03/no-middle-ground/trackback/