North Korea's nuclear move offers a path out of isolation
Thursday 26 June 2008
North Korea has played a shrewd diplomatic game, giving a limited account of its nuclear activities and yet winning substantial benefits from the United States.
North Korea's nuclear move offers a path out of isolation
By Armen GeorgianThursday 26 June 2008
North Korea stands to gain a great deal by giving a limited account of its nuclear activities.
In time, it should be taken off the US Trading with the Enemy Act – ending restrictions on financial transactions. Its likely removal from the US terrorist blacklist will give it credibility and open the door to cooperation with international financial institutions. And crucially, North Korea's nuclear declaration should trigger more fuel aid. Heating oil will make the difference between life and death this winter, as the World Food Programme warns of another famine. Shortages in the 1990’s are thought to have claimed around a million lives.
North Korea should get these benefits despite keeping quiet about its suspected uranium-enrichment activities, its existing stockpiles of weapons and its alleged nuclear cooperation with Syria. To insist on North Korea's clarifying these things might sour what must taste of a diplomatic victory for President George Bush. He has, after all, secured the start of North Korea’s disarmament. And he has done it multilaterally – through six-nation talks – thereby ditching the unilateral style in which he called Pyongyang part of an “axis of evil” in 2003.
It’s highly unlikely that Bush’s hope of a Palestinian state this year will be realized. Iraq is a very mixed bag. North Korea can at least be presented as a relative success story.
