North Korea Watch: Deal or NO Deal?

AFP: Bush should reject North Korea nuclear deal: ex-UN envoy

US President George W. Bush should reject an agreement reached at six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, said Washington’s former UN envoy, John Bolton.

“This is a very bad deal,” Bolton told CNN television, saying it contradicts Bush’s policy and would show US weakness at a time when it is challenging Iran over its controversial nuclear program.

“I’m hoping that the president has not been fully briefed on it and he still has time to reject it,” he said.

He said the agreement, which needs the approval of the six governments involved in the talks, “undercuts” UN sanctions resolutions against North Korea, “and I think the Iranians have only to follow the same example.”

“If the would-be proliferators can simply through persistence get the United States to compromise on its basic principles, they’re going to succeed in proliferation. That’s why this deal is such a bad precedent,” Bolton said.

China circulated Tuesday a “final” joint statement outlining the first steps North Korea would take to end its nuclear drive and the economic rewards it would receive in return, said envoys meeting in Beijing.

Officials have yet to specify the details of the new joint statement, but they made it clear that North Korea would be given rich incentives in terms of oil and other energy aid if it took first steps towards disarming.

The chief US negotiator, Christopher Hill, described the text as “excellent.”

Flap heard Bolton on the Laura Ingraham Show this mornng and he made a convincing argument against the DEAL.

Somehow Bolton is more articulate in the private sector working for the American Enterprise Institute than as a Bush Administration parrot.

James S. Robbins: Deal or No Deal

Whatâ€™s Korean for â€œsucker?â€

North Koreaâ€™s chief arms negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan, is known as â€œthe Smiling Assassin.â€ Do you suppose the North Koreans use similar grudgingly respectful terms to describe their American counterparts? Somehow I doubt it. Check out the terms of the latest agreement with North Korea. Pyongyang gets $400 million in aid, chiefly in the form of energy, and we ease economic sanctions. In return they agree to begin to give up the means to produce new nuclear weapons, and establish working groups to discuss maybe shutting down their nuclear program at some future date as yet undetermined. They also get to maintain their current nuclear stockpile. The deal is a dramatic diplomatic victory, but unfortunately not for the U.S.

Read it all.

What yesterday was optimism is now the question: Deal or No Deal?

NO DEAL, continue hastened deployment of National Missile Defense and tighten sanctions.

America can do better.

Stay tuned……