Friday 29th of March 2024

How Bush Is Marching Korea Into War

" North Korea's recent brinkmanship is nothing but a desperate reaction to the Bush administration's sudden policy shift, which has made the impoverished nation economically crippled and internationally isolated. With the prospect of an imminent war in Iraq, North Korea regards itself as the next target of US unilateralism and its agenda of "regime change".  Parmendra Jain, Professor of Asian Studies, Adelaide University, March 2003

Professor Jain explains in this AsiaTimes Online article how the Bush Administration has been simultanesoully goading and gutting the Koreans:

[extract]

The Agreed Framework, however, has unilaterally been breached by the Bush administration. Not only has the US administration stopped supportive activities to North Korea, it also choked some of Pyongyang's vital sources of foreign-currency earnings. For example, the US pressured Israel to withdraw payment of some US$3 billion to Pyongyang that it had earlier agreed as part of stopping North Korea's exports of missiles and technologies to Arab nations. Further, North Korea has been pushed to the wall by declaring it as part of the "axis of evil" and not producing any new evidence that North Korea was in breach of any international obligation.

 Read the rest of the Article here.

No champagne and cigars yet

From the independent

Diplomatic victory for China as North Korea resumes nuclear talks

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 01 November 2006
Three weeks after conducting its first nuclear test, which sent shockwaves round the world, North Korea yesterday agreed to return to the negotiating table.
The decision is a [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1945773.ece|diplomatic victory for China], North Korea's Communist ally and a veto-holding power on the United Nations Security Council, which lost patience after the nuclear test on 9 October.
It also emerged yesterday that China cut off oil supplies to its neighbourin September amid reports that a test was imminent and sent an envoy to read the riot act to North Korea's "Dear Leader", Kim Jong Il, before hosting yesterday's talks in Beijing.

quack, quack .....

‘President George Bush suffered his most visible diplomatic setback since his party's defeat in mid-term elections yesterday when Asian leaders failed to back Washington's call for robust action against North Korea.

Mr Bush, in Vietnam on his first foreign trip since the elections, had lobbied strenuously for a unified strategy aimed at getting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions, meeting the Russian, Chinese, South Korean and Japanese leaders on the sidelines of the summit.

The rebuff - the second for Mr Bush this weekend on North Korea - underlined the president's diminished powers in the wake of his election defeat. So too did the muted response to Mr Bush's presence in Hanoi, a shadow of the tumultuous reception for President Clinton, when he visited Vietnam six years ago.’

Asian Leaders Fail To Back Bush's Strategy To Curb North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions