Six-Party Talks Yield North Korean Nuke Deal

After three years of on again, off again discussions, the six-party talks on Korea have finally yielded a deal on North Korea’s nuclear program. Within the next 60 days, Pyongyang will shut down its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in exchange for 50,000 metric tons of fuel or its equivalent in economic assistance. When North Korea permanently ends its nuclear operations, it is entitled to another 950,000 tons of fuel. Chief US negotiator, Christopher Hill, said the deal is “only one phase of denuclearization. We’re not done.” He’s right, but at least, the world has started this project.

North Korea, the US and China all needed a deal, and South Korea, Japan and Russia are not hurt by a step forward to a settlement either. North Korea, of course, is running out of food, has little fuel and the freezing of its financial assets abroad has focused the minds of those in charge. In America, Mr. Bush is a lame duck who is in the process of losing two wars and who can’t seem to find a way to leave a legacy other than catastrophe. The Chinese were embarrassed when the North Koreans went ahead with their nuclear bomb test last year despite Beijing’s demands that they refrain. This deal gets everybody off the hook to a degree.

This is not the end of the matter, though, as Ambassador Hill noted. North Korea still has some highly enriched uranium [HEU] lying around, and probably a handful of low-yield nukes. It also has a missile program that can target a great many other countries. What to do about the HEU, the assembled bombs and the missiles will be for future discussions. Meanwhile, the US still has North Korea on its list of nations that aid terrorists, and there is no peace treaty ending the Korean Conflict from the 1950s, meaning North Korea still feels the US is a hostile power.

There are some neo-cons and chickenhawks who believe that the deal is a sell out, most notably America’s ex-UN ambassador John Bolton. He said on CNN, “This is a very bad deal. It contradicts fundamental premises of the president’s policy he’s been following for the past six years. And second, it makes the administration look very weak at a time in Iraq . . . when it needs to look strong.” Poor Mr. Bolton, he still thinks that the past six years of US foreign policy have been something other than a disaster. Moreover, he mistakes looking weak for being rational. In Iraq-Nam, the whole problem has been an unwillingness to make deals, relying instead on force.

The current deal is largely the same one the Clinton administration had with the sociopaths in North Korea, but there is some provision for dismantling the North Korean nukes, and that is a new selling point. The deal will need to be monitored, and it is vital that there is progress in other fields to raise the cost to North Korea for violating the arrangement. All the same, the world is a bit better off this morning than it was last week.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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