Today, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the six-party talks to disarm North Korea could resume this month. Hill, America’s chief representative at the long-running negotiations, is in Moscow in an effort to save the Bush administration’s faltering campaign to take away Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons. Kim Jong Il’s militant state failed to honor an agreement to make a declaration of all its nuclear programs by the end of 2007.
This is a particularly bad moment for Kim to stiff the international community. He is set to lose his most valuable ally, the other Korea. Elections last month ended a decade of “progressive”—actually leftist—rule in the South. A conservative, Lee Myung-bak, is set to take over on February 25. After his victory, Lee’s spokesman stated that he would review Seoul’s policies and programs that have supported its northern neighbor. The potential loss of assistance is critical because the North Korean economy largely failed to respond to a package of restructuring measures announced in July 2002, and since then aid from China and South Korea is the primary reason why the regime has remained afloat. Kim Jong Il’s one-man government appears so shaky that some American and South Korean officials think that North Korea could collapse in the near future.
These and other developments suggest that Kim should be even more amenable to giving up his arsenal for immediate financial assistance and the promise of admission into the international community. On the contrary, he is digging in his heels.
Why is he doing that? Hill provided one clue yesterday when he was in Beijing. There the American envoy told reporters that Pyongyang was delaying the issuance of its declaration because “to acknowledge certain activities would invite additional questioning on our part and further scrutiny on things.” By “certain activities,” Hill was primarily referring to North Korea’s efforts to develop a program to build nukes with uranium cores.
There is, in all probability, great concern in Beijing that a complete North Korean declaration would reveal the Chinese origin of Pyongyang’s uranium program. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the head of a global black-market ring in nuclear weapons technology, said he began working with North Korea around 1991. Khan agreed to transfer Chinese-designed equipment to Pyongyang, and China helped him deliver it. When Khan’s proliferation activities were exposed in the early part of this decade, Beijing persuaded Islamabad to end its investigation, pardon Khan, and keep him away from American interrogators. Beijing has steadfastly professed that it has been “completely in the dark” about Kim Jong Il’s uranium program when it is clear that it had substantial knowledge.
These denials are, as intelligence analyst John Loftus notes, “a real signal of partnership.” Some speculate that the Chinese may even have developed the long-term master plan that contemplated Pyongyang giving up its visible plutonium weapons program and keeping its covert uranium one. In any event, on Monday Agence France-Presse reported that China has developed contingency plans to grab North Korea’s nukes if that is necessary. Such an exercise would, of course, eliminate evidence of Beijing’s nuclear assistance to Pyongyang. In light of all the evidence, it appears that China recently ordered North Korea not to provide its promised declaration of its nuclear activities.
Another round of six-party talks, which Christopher Hill wants, will not help persuade North Korea to give up its arsenal. Yet insisting on a complete declaration and dragging out the disarmament process may help smoke out the world’s most dangerous proliferator. And I’m not referring to North Korea.
Which leads one to wonder if Hamas has been reading the Bible…. (Judges 16).
Certainly, the more carnage they have fomented, the more wildly popular they are. (And of course, it helps immeasurably that they’re trying to kill Jews—and that they are being killed by Jews…. Can paradise be far away?)
Solution? Gaza back to Egypt’s control.
They created the ‘palestinians’ as a genocdial weapon masquerading as a ‘nationality’. Let them reabsorb them, and take responsibility for theri frankensteinian creation.
Shove it down their throats.
Same for the ethnically different, somewhat calmer, but no less genocidal ‘west bank’ arabs. Jordan’s problem – not Israel’s.
And if they still fire rockets and send in terrorists, forced relocation across the Nile and Jordan rivers.
‘Give war a chance’ to solve problems. Resist the international ‘peace processors’ attempts to reset the gameboard.
Everybody wants Egypt to take back Gaza, and a lot of people want Jordan to take back the West Bank. What makes anyone think that either country wants anything to do with the Palestinians, or the heartburn of trying to govern them?
But otherwise, Michael is correct: time to give war a chance. The only reason there is a Palestinian problem today is the rest of the world constantly intervening to save the Palestinians from the consequences of their own folly. Israel’s major error, one dating back to the Six Day War, is ever giving the Palestinians the slightest glimmer of hope that they would ever have a state of their own. It only encouraged them to want the whole enchilada.
Egypt can be forced/outmaneuvered. Ditto Jordan. These nations have no leverage, other than their so called ‘moderate’ nature.
Indeed, the transplanted Hashemites, pulled out of the Arabian peninsula by the British and illegally given ‘jordan’ (75% of the Palestine Mandate) as a consolation prize after the Tent of Saud was gien the peninsula, are currrently an obstacle to a more just solution. ‘Jordan’ is majority ‘palestinian’ (that is to say, comprised of ethnic arabs derived from the general region – arabs have – or had- no concept of ‘nationality’ ) governed by this British installed Hashemite tribe. One way or another – assassination, revolution, thru the ballot box, and even by ‘royal’ succession, Jordan will one day, maybe soon, become a de facto palestinian ruled state.
Why create another?
Dream scenario:
‘Palestinians’ to Jordan.
Hashemites back to ruling the Arabian Peninsula.
‘Our good friends the Saudis’ either exile to Marbella or swing from lamp posts (as they so richly deserve).
Historical wrongs can be righted at certain historical junctures. We are approaching one such period.
It may take decades to play out.
What’s the rush?
No doubt, many of the Gazans would like to see Israel re-take control. If I’m not mistaken, Gaza had a booming economy for a while. If the IDF were in charge of security, the restrictions on movement and access could be lightened. Commerce would then increase. Yes, the Jews would still be subject to the perennial enmity of the population, but now that they have been severely weakened and humbled, the Gazan entrepreneurs and many others may have learned the lesson that their territory cannot survive, let alone thrive, without civilized rule with adequate security.
The “Final Solution to the Gaza Problem”, is to , at long last, reclaim Gaza for Israel, and let the people go.
Egypt, it is now clear, doesn;t want Gaza back. It has been a monumental pain in the butt. If there is a border with Israeli Gaza, that is far preferable to bordering an Emirate dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Tehran mullahs. Egypt can tolerate Israel as a neighbor, but what it cannot tolerate on its border is an Islamofacist client of an expansionist Sheiite Iran.
The long suffering Arabs in the refugees in the camps deserve our help. Subsidise their emigration to the land of their choice, and free them from the slavery of their “friends”.
…Visas for Gazans?
No thank you. America has clasped enough poisonous serpents to her breasts through legal Muslim and illegal immigration. While her fall will be swift, I see no need to hasten the process further.
Not all solutions are viable. Egypt won’t retake gaza! ANd, jordan wants nothing to do with the west bank!
Israel also doesn’t want the two parts to be seen as “one whole.” So “after” … especially if it includes “departures” for haniyeh; and others? Could me an escape to someplace else, where iran would be a safer destination than, say, syria.
You also have to account for the response among the population. In Israel, Lebanon 2006 did not leave the people so frail they’re unwilling to occupy their shelters, again. What if this is NOT so for the arabs in gaza?
You’ll notice, too, that in Lebanon, the major faction in control of “diplomacy” is the shi’ites. (The same is true in Irak. And, Dubya just got shoes tossed at him, when he went there for a photo op.)
By and large, arabs aren’t truth-tellers. But among themselves? Oh, they know full well that the saud’s had big eyes on real estate. (And, that “real estate” bubble got busted by good.) There are no saud’s right now, controlling syria, for instance. And, that was one “request” made of Olmert back in the summer of 2006.
Up ahead, too, there’s an election in Israel on February 10th. And, Livni just got the stuffings taken out of her; when Olmert went on record as having had to call Bush, to stop Condi from signing onto the Security Counsel’s resolution. No, this doesn’t “play” in America. But in elections in Israel? Livni, ahead, may not be calling the shots?
New players.
Can Obama “change course?” Guess what? It’s not so easy to turn the Ship of State around. And, whatever he does, if he chooses to go in circles, would get noticed. And, his honeymoon would be over.
Some say Hillary is trying to set herself up as a key player in the next presidential race, in 2012. What if she can’t? (I don’t remember the numbers, but I think Adlai Stevenson did better in 1952. Than he did when he re-ran his race against Eisenhower, in 1956.)
Politics is very dirty business. From the time Julius Caesar was murdered by LESSER MEN! The world learned what politicians can do.
On the other hand? Obama has a chance to get enough people behind his decisions, that what’s really ahead, ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, takes a shape that affects the rich … and helps the middle class. Prices on housing, and other items, may, in fact, come down.
Here’s an example: Back in the summer of 1929, before the October collapse, housing prices were out their highest! It left lots of people bankrupt. And, it also left in place the high prices people had paid to “own” and to “speculate.” And, then? Prices of houses don’t rise all that much for another 25 years. When did prices reach those highs? September 1954. This is the stuff fortunes are made and lost on.
Where Obama surprises, by the way, is how “middle-of-the-road” he’s been in the decisions you see. Among the clunkers. As to Hillary, once she’s confirmed by the senate, I’m not so sure how she could get fired. But, believe me, IF she toodles off the reservation … Obama may blow her further away from her own run, than you can imagine right now.
Dubya, in a weak handed move (where everything in his hand is always played like deuces); he just pulled Condi away from her “dance with UN paper.” Clumsily. But he did enough to ruin her “goodbye.” I guess she has to play the piano, ahead, if she wants to come back on stage?
Why not declare Gaza a state? Get this affirmed by the UN. Have the UN sponsor elections. Then hold the Gazan state accountable under international law. Once it becomes a state formally, the leadership of the Gazans can no longer claim the glamour of being a national liberation movement which excuses and justifies everything.