AP source: Obama writes letter to NKorean leader

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama has written a personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as part of an intense effort to draw the reclusive nation back to nuclear disarmament talks, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.

The letter was delivered to North Korean officials last week by Obama's special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, during a visit to Pyongyang aimed at restarting the stalled negotiations, the official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomacy, would not describe the contents of the letter but said they fit with Bosworth's general message.

President Bush was reaching out to Kim in personal correspondence.

Doesn't mean he wasn't. Whether to publicize something like this is a completely different decision from whether to do it. You can be sure President Bush relied on the CIA, Cheney, Rice and others, in deciding how to handle sensitive intelligence issues and communications with leaders of totalitarian or unstable regimes.

The fundamental situation in NK has changed, because Dear Leader's health has clearly declined significantly since President Obama took office. There may well be something akin to major panic going on among the nations in a position to influence the situation at all. At this point, it's hard to envision a peaceful transition of power in NK, and with much of it's population perpeetually on the brink of the starvation, things could get out of control very quickly.

China is calling the shots on this, with South Korea getting a polite hearing from China but not much more. Our job is to cooperate with China's efforts, whatever they are, and do so in a way that gives the US as much influence as possible (not much, in this case), and that builds a foundation for dealing with future issues involving China. The NK population is going to swarm over the Chinese and SK borders, not ours. It is critically important that the US not be seen as having triggered that (though it's likely to happen, at least to some degree, no matter what anybody does).

I don’t agree that we should do whatever China tells us to do. That’s not the America I know and love.

The North Korean population won’t be swarming over any borders. They’ll be shot if they try. Those shots were not China’s call though. Obama’s pen pal gave that order.

China controls China’s borders and has serious military and economic might. When it comes to things that directly effect their borders, we do what they say. China is just as interested as we are in making sure NK doesn’t manage to develop fully functional nuclear weapons, so they’re our natural ally in this situation. It’s in our own interests to play nice with China on this one, and it’s also in the interests of the desperate North Korean people, who we really don’t want to see get massacred as they try to run over the border into China.

The Nork’s official newspaper had a blurb on this:

“His most highly exalted great leader Kim Jong Il received a personal letter from the groveling Kenyan President of the United States offering peace at all costs including missile technology gift and a visit from the Hooters all-star team”.

Dear Your Great Lordship Kim ‘Kong’ Il;

Please please please help me look like my weak foreign policy can really work. If you would just entertain the idea of meeting with one of my representatives i will come and bow before you in front of the entire world, in deference to your greatness. You don’t have to agree to anything but ,if we could make it look like you are interested in hearing my ideas, it would really help me out. I am desperate please please help me. My con is being revealed and i don’t know if i will make it through my entire term if i dont achieve something. They might even ask for my Nobel Prize back. I would even considering sharing it with you, because i know you have been cheated from receiving a Nobel Prize in Science and Math and Literature so many times when you clearly earned it.

Please please please help me.

Your Servant, Barack H. Obama

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