July 13, 2005

TWO PARTIES IS PLENTY:

S. Korea Offers Energy to North: Seoul will provide electricity if Pyongyang halts its nuclear efforts. Rice, on visit, hails plan. (Sonni Efron and Barbara Demick, July 13, 2005,. LA Times)

South Korea announced Tuesday an offer to break the yearlong stalemate in negotiations with North Korea by sending 2 million kilowatts of electricity across the demilitarized zone if the North agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed the proposal today as a creative way to solve North Korea's energy problems without the risk of nuclear proliferation.

The electricity would replace power that was to be supplied by two light-water nuclear reactors that a U.S.-led consortium had been building in the North. Construction was suspended in 2003 after North Korea was caught cheating on an earlier denuclearization pact.

Rice has said that the U.S. agreed to address North Korea's energy needs in the last proposal it put on the negotiating table in June 2004, but ruled out civilian nuclear power plants because of the proliferation risk.

"That is what is so very useful about the South Korean proposal and I think a considerable improvement on where we have ever been," Rice said in a joint appearance with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon.


Not that an agreement would stop us anyway, but it would be best if they could work this out so we aren't a party to it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 13, 2005 9:29 AM
Comments

Easy - just start moving troops out.

Posted by: at July 13, 2005 9:32 AM

Isn't this what the Clinton admin did - bribe them to stop producing nukes - but they went ahead and continued development anyway? The only difference seems to be SK would be doing the bribing, not the US.

Posted by: AWW at July 13, 2005 10:22 AM

yes

Posted by: oj at July 13, 2005 10:28 AM

Its SK's cat. And China's tree. If they want to get the cat out of the tree, they will have to figure out how to do it, by themselves.

Let's bring the troops home from SK before we worry about Iraq.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 13, 2005 10:39 AM

50 years of the Korean quagmire is more than enough. The best part of withdrawing troops will be hearing the left scream "No, don't bring the troops home!"

Posted by: b at July 13, 2005 11:31 AM

Everyone on the left wants to negotiate directly with lil' Kim. Why, I don't know. Maybe he showed Madeline a good time back in the day.

The problem is that the Democrats never really paid a price for the folly of Clinton's appeasement 10+ years ago.

But, the left is now boxed in on Korea. Every leading Democrat has said it is a more serious threat than Iraq, from Hillary to Reid to Richardson to Pelosi to Biden to Clark to all their punditry. Bush has a free hand, when he decides what course to take.

Posted by: jim hamlen at July 13, 2005 12:05 PM

Troops home by Christmas. Pass it on.

North Korea is not our problem and as soon as we leave, Asians will figure out "tout suite" what to do. Just a little French lingo in honor of Bastille Day.

Posted by: erp at July 13, 2005 12:48 PM

we should offer the north control of south korea, if they give up nukes.

Posted by: cjm at July 13, 2005 1:50 PM

cjm:

I like it.....I like it. Not as much as stampeding cattle through the Vatican, but I like it.

Posted by: ratbert at July 13, 2005 2:31 PM

North Korea and its nukes are primarily a regional Asian problem, but not exclusively.

Although it's hard for me to believe that Kim Jong Il would ever give up control of any of the nukes that NoKo sacrificed so much to acquire, it's not impossible that he would do so, especially if at some time in the future he became convinced of that which is so obvious to a Western observer, that NoKo is a nation and culture with no future whatsoever.

If Kim Jong Il knew that it's Game Over for NoKo anyhow, he might enjoy seeing D.C. go up in a mushroom cloud, partially courtesy of himself.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at July 13, 2005 4:24 PM

Michael,

What makes you think that Little Kim wouldn't happily see all of North Korea wiped out in order to demonstrate his godhood?

Posted by: bart at July 14, 2005 8:22 AM

If he were interested in trading his life and privilege for glory, he could have done it by now.

IMO, it would take him feeling like a cornered rat.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at July 14, 2005 3:11 PM
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