BS: Korea...

Subject: BS: Korea...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 05:23 AM

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea (search) publicly acknowledged Thursday for the first time that it has nuclear weapons and said it won't return to six-nation talks aimed at getting it to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The statement from the reclusive, Stalinist state dramatically raised the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave challenge to President Bush (search), who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programs through multilateral talks.

"We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea had reportedly told American negotiators during private talks that it possessed nuclear weapons and might test one of them. North Korea's U.N. envoy told The Associated Press last year the country had "weaponized" plutonium (search) extracted from its pool of 8,000 nuclear spent fuel rods.

But Thursday's statement marked North Korea's first public admission that it has nuclear weapons through its usual means of making official declarations — statements carried on KCNA, its main news outlet to world.


North Korea's "nuclear weapons will remain (a) nuclear deterrent for self-defense under any circumstances," the ministry said. "The present reality proves that only powerful strength can protect justice and truth."

Since 2003, the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia have held three rounds of talks in Beijing aimed at persuading the North to abandon nuclear weapons development in return for economic and diplomatic rewards. But no significant progress has been made.

A fourth round scheduled for September was canceled when North Korea refused to attend, citing what it called a "hostile" U.S. policy.

In the past weeks, hopes had risen that North Korea might return to six-nation talks, especially after Bush started his second term last month by refraining from direct criticism of North Korea.

On Thursday, North Korea said it had no intention to rejoin such talks any time soon.

"We have wanted the six-party talks but we are compelled to suspend our participation in the talks for an indefinite period till we have recognized that there is justification for us to attend the talks," the North said Thursday.

North Korea said it came to its decision because "the U.S. disclosed its attempt to topple the political system in (North Korea) at any cost, threatening it with a nuclear stick."

Still, North Korea said it retained its "principled stand to solve the issue through dialogue and negotiations and its ultimate goal to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula remain unchanged."

Such a comment has widely been interpreted as North Korea's negotiating tactic to get more economic and diplomatic concession from the United States before joining any crucial talks.

In Bush's State of the Union address last week, he only mentioned North Korea in a single sentence, saying Washington was "working closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions." That was in stark contrast to Bush's speech three years ago, when he branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq.

The softened rhetoric had raised hopes for a positive response from North Korea, with analysts saying that the North would wait to hear Bush's speech before deciding to rejoin nuclear talks.

The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused North Korea of running a secrete uranium-enrichment program in violation of international treaties, and it and its allies cut off free fuel oil shipments for the impoverished country.

North Korea retaliated by quitting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in early 2003 and restarting its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program. Its plutonium facilities had been frozen in return for oil shipments and other benefits under a 1994 deal with Washington.

The North had also claimed that it completed reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods previously unloaded from its 5-megawatt reactor and kept under U.N. seals under the 1994 deal. The reprocessing could yield enough plutonium for several nuclear bombs.

The North has also reloaded the 5-megawatt reactor, which can generate more spent fuel laden with plutonium.

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 06:09 AM

I imagine the timing of this announcement may have been a response to the big football match on Wednesday between North Korea and Japan, which the Koreans lost 2-0.

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 08:18 AM

So we better hurry up and nuke the place before they learn how to use them !

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: GUEST,bbc at work
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 11:21 AM

Please don't. I'll be visiting there at the end of March.

bbc

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 11:26 AM

We're buggered anyway...doesn't matter who started it or where it's gonna come from. Everywhere's destabilising. I give it a decade, tops, before we all got blown into oblivion or killed of by disease or hunger....enjoy it while it lasts! :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 11:55 AM

So place with so petty, or totally insane leaders, that it cares enough about football enough to time their sabre-rattling by it has got Nukes.
We're all in serious trouble, especially anybody close. Shanghi Celtic, do you feel like a long series of holidays?

Bunnahabhain

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 01:29 PM

"So place with so petty, or totally insane leaders, that it cares enough about football enough to time their sabre-rattling by it has got Nukes." Bunnahabhain

I so agree, Bunnahabhain. Like, totally.

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: Boab
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 08:00 PM

I hope sincerely that one day soon North Korea will drop their nuclear programme. As in ANY part of the world, it begs calamity. No nation is above the ultimate use of nuclear arms in war. It has, after all, already happened.

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: Peace
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 08:11 PM

The fear with countries having nuclear weapons available for use is that if they are about to be decisively beaten in a 'traditional' war, the leaders may decide they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

"Hackett also wrote a number of best selling works of fiction, The Third World War, and The Third World War: The Untold Story. General Sir John Hackett died in September 1997"

The two books mentioned above, while works of fiction, are very clear that modern-day warfare will quickly encompass the use of battlefield nuclear weapons--if the opponents are evenly matched. The US does not have the 'legs' to wage a conventional war in Korea. The size of the North Korean army militates against a war of attrition. This situation must be taken very seriously, IMO. More so than the situation in the mid-East which, while it has potential to escalate, does not have the probability of doing so.

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 09:00 PM

My, my, my....

While Bush and Co. were buzy attacking some folks who didn't have anything to do with 9-11, North Korea was taking advantage of their eindow of time, ahhhh, building nuclear bombs and delivery systems (thanks partly to our loyal allies, the Pakistanis)...

Hmmmm? Seems like Bush and Co. Have badly bungled just about every forieng policy decision they could have. They "disengaged" in the Isreali/Palestinain problem. They attacked Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9-11, for 9-11. They let North Korea develope nuclear capabilities. They overthrew democracy in Haiti. Meanwhile, they oignore the Sudan, where genocide is occuring daily.

The problem with Bush's foriegne policy is that it is predicated on doing everything 180 degrees from what was done by the Clinton folk and though I'm no Clinton lover, his administartion was doing a few things well in the area of foriegn policy.

Bush, on the other hand, has failed miserably.

North Korea beinf yet another piece of evidence..,

Condi Rice should quit.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Korea...
From: Peace
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 12:55 AM

Lots of sites to peruse