Posted on 05/23/2004 9:36:01 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON, May 23 - The discovery that North Korea may have supplied uranium to Libya poses an immediate challenge to the White House: while President Bush is preoccupied on the other side of the world, an economically desperate nation may be engaging in exactly the kind of nuclear proliferation that the president says he went to war in Iraq to halt.
Yet to listen to many in the White House, concern about North Korea's nuclear program brings little of the urgency that surrounded the decision 14 months ago to oust Saddam Hussein. When Mr. Bush has been asked about North Korea in recent months, he has emphasized his patience. He does not refer to the intelligence estimates that North Korea has at least two nuclear weapons, or to the debate within the American intelligence community about whether North Korea has spent the past 18 months building more.
Instead, he lauds the progress he says the United States has made in organizing China, Russia, Japan and South Korea to negotiate as one with the North Koreans - though those talks have resulted in no progress so far in ending either of North Korea's two major nuclear programs.
Just last week, the Pentagon even announced it was removing a brigade of troops that had been securing South Korea's border with the North, and sending it to provide additional forces for the Iraqi occupation.
With international inspectors recently reporting that North Korea may have shipped uranium, already processed into a gas that can be fed into centrifuges for enrichment into bomb fuel, the White House has been silent. On Sunday, a White House spokesman declined to talk about the reports, other than to issue a statement at the president's ranch in Texas that the news proves the need for "the United States policy for North Korea to disarm in a complete, verifiable and irreversible fashion."
"I admit there appears to be more than a little irony here," said one senior administration official, when asked how what he thought Mr. Bush might have said in public if Saddam Hussein - instead of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader - had been suspected of shipping raw material for nuclear weapons to a country like Libya. "But Iraq was a different problem, in a different place, and we had viable military options," he continued. In North Korea, he said, Mr. Bush has virtually none. Indeed, the problems and the threats are different, even though Mr. Hussein's Iraq was lumped with North Korea as part of the "axis of evil" that President Bush cited in 2002.
Even hawks within the administration - a group led by Vice President Dick Cheney, who said on a trip to Asia last month that "time is not necessarily on our side" - see no major risk that North Korea will lash out at its neighbors or the United States.
The country is broke; American military officials say it can barely afford the jet fuel to give its fighter pilots time to train. Iraq, too, was in desperate economic straits, but it at least had oil revenue, skimmed from the United Nations oil-for-food program, and active trade. North Korea is literally starving; millions have died of malnutrition.
But the same poverty that makes North Korea less of a military threat makes it a potent proliferation threat. For years, the North's main export has been missiles. It has sold them to Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Libya and others, often sending its engineers abroad to fabricate custom designs. The reports of likely uranium sales to Libya have created the chilling possibility that the North has now found a new and profitable product - and that Libya may not have been the only customer. "Many predicted that sooner or later we would have to worry about the North Koreans not only as users but as exporters of nuclear technology," said Daniel Poneman, a former national security official and co-author of "Going Critical" (Brookings Institution Press, 2004), a new book about the first North Korean nuclear crisis in the mid-1990's. It was this fear that Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage expressed to Congress last year, when he warned that North Korea would not have to develop complete nuclear arms to become a serious threat; it could sell ingredients.
In short, if the North's sales to Libya are confirmed, the nightmare that Mr. Bush discussed so often last year - the sale of "the world's worst weapons to the world's most dangerous dictators" - may be happening at the other end of the axis. Iraq, it turns out, had little or nothing to sell.
Mr. Bush has addressed the issue chiefly through an agreement among a growing number of nations to intercept suspected shipments of illegal weapons, nuclear parts or chemical precursors. The United States, Germany and Italy stopped a shipment of nuclear equipment to Libya last year, apparently convincing Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to give up his nuclear program.
Beyond the interception strategy, there is a widespread sense in Washington that neither the Bush administration nor North Korea has much incentive to confront the nuclear issue this year. Mr. Bush, notes Don Oberdorfer, the author of "The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History" (Basic Books, 2002), is not "prepared to do anything about North Korea because he is overcommitted in Iraq and has a great loathing of dealing with the North Koreans directly."
The result, Mr. Oberdorfer argues, is that the United States is not "making the kind of preliminary compromises that would be necessary to get a negotiation going."
Administration officials disagree, saying that North Korea should not be rewarded for cheating on its past nuclear agreements and must begin dismantling weapons before it sees any economic benefits.
So far this has been a prescription for stalemate. But many in the administration agree that Mr. Kim has his own reasons for not seeking a deal this year: the North Korean leader is presumed to be rooting for Mr. Bush's defeat in November, in hopes he will face a more willing negotiating partner in John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The risk is that by the time the two countries re-engage, North Korea could have six or eight more weapons, according to the most dire estimates in the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, a view that more cautious intelligence analysts say is based more on conjecture about the North's engineering skills than any real intelligence. Such a number could let the North keep one or two for its own use, and have more to sell, in whole or parts, which is a very different position.
Also called blackmail.
Ping for Mr. H- and Frank G-.
We have made TOO many "preliminary compromises" so far!
Wait, didn't Clinton fix this? How odd, the author seems to have neglected mentioning that fact.
If you are a liberal, the history of North Korea gets a little murky before the year 2000.
There are reports that North Korea and Iran are going to build ICBMs soon! Evils are getting united!
And to imagine we wouldn't be having to deal with this today had Clinton not sold reactors to N. Korea... oh, but the NYT isn't concerned about that... It's all Bush's fault!
But Dems don't have the common sense nature gives puppies. Their thought process is "an article appeared in the New York Times. There must be a high level negotiation, handshake, and photo op. Otherwise the earth will stop turning on its axis. Whatever the bad guys ask for in return for said handshake must be given to them."
Kerry would simply pay them. Then they'd agree to develop their nukes in peace while pocketing the money, and we'd agree to look the other way. The New York Times would agree not to run any articles. And Dems everywhere would consider the "problem" (unanswered articles, in would appear) "solved" (off the front page). Until the NKs want more, or a city goes skyward, or - worst of all, way worse than the previous - a Republican wins the US presidency.
Actually, Jimmy Carter was the one that "fixed" it..
If you go back and check the record, Clinton was pretty pi$$ed about Carter's agreement, but was obligated to go along with it..
I think Clinton understood the threat of N.Korea, he just didn't understand what total dork Carter was..
-"Yet to listen to many in the White House, concern about North Korea's nuclear program brings little of the urgency that surrounded the decision 14 months ago to oust Saddam Hussein."-
If I didn't know better, I'd think the left-media-dogs WANT us to start bombing North Korea. They seem so "concerned" about the situation.
Maybe Carter will go back into his Cave.
N. Korea nuke material -> Libya
Pakistan nuke centrifuges -> Libya
Iraqi money and scientists -> Libya
Libya builds the hollowed out mountain nuke facility.
Presto, Islao-facists nuclear bomb.
We have most of the pieces under control.
It's all hooked together. Stay tuned.
Right!
May not hear this yet tonight though.
In short, if the North's sales to Libya are confirmed, the nightmare that Mr. Bush discussed so often last year - the sale of "the world's worst weapons to the world's most dangerous dictators" - may be happening at the other end of the axis. Iraq, it turns out, had little or nothing to sell.
No, But thanx to the UN, they had plenty of $$$$ to BUY from North Korea, though somehow that escapes the analysis.
And remmeber the President said the British learned that Iraq tried to Buy Uranium in Africa. Not Yellowcake in Niger. Uranium in Africa, should we get Joe Wilson, and his media enablers a map, Circle Libya, and await an apology?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.