The Bush administration plans to remove North Korea from a terrorism blacklist on Saturday after getting assurances the Stalinist nation has agreed to a plan to inspect its nuclear facilities, that's according to The Associated Press. President Bush signed off on the move on Friday in a bid to salvage a faltering accord aimed at getting the North to abandon atomic weapons, according to diplomats briefed on the matter.
The removal is provisional and North Korea will be put back on the State Department's "state sponsors of terrorism" list if it doesn't comply with the inspections, they said. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because the administration has not yet announced the step. The expected delisting comes as North Korea moves to restart a disabled nuclear reactor and takes other provocative actions, including expelling U.N. inspectors and test firing missiles, that have heightened tensions and threaten the shaky disarmament agreement. It also follows days of intense internal debate in Washington and consultations with U.S. negotiating partners China, South Korea, Russia and Japan. Japan had balked at the move because the North has not yet resolved issues related to its abduction of Japanese citizens. Neither the White House nor the State Department would comment on the decision, which has been in the works since chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill returned from a trip to North Korea late last week. But earlier Friday, U.S. officials said they were trying to build consensus among negotiating partners on the step as well as the inspection regime that Washington insists must accompany the delisting. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke on Friday with the foreign ministers of China, South Korea and Japan and was trying to reach her Russian counterpart, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
At issue was whether tentative arrangements worked out last week between Hill and the North Koreans were acceptable to the others. Under those terms, the U.S. would provisionally remove North Korea from the terror list once the North agrees to the inspections. McCormack dismissed suggestions the United States was trying to force an agreement on its partners and declined to say which, if any, countries were preventing a consensus. However, Japan had been resistant, arguing that North Korea should not be taken off the list until the cases of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and '80s are resolved. In Tokyo on Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said his country could accept a U.S. move to remove North Korea from the list but only if it was reasonable. And in Washington, Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa used a meeting of the world's top economies to urge the United States to keep in mind Japanese unease over the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles and about its past kidnapping of Japanese citizens. It was not immediately clear how or if Japan was swayed, although a senior U.S. official said the administration was working urgently to meet Japanese concerns amid fears the entire denuclearization deal would collapse.
Under the 2007 disarmament deal, the North was to have disabled its main nuclear facility and the United States was to have removed it from the terrorism list. But after the Yongbyon reactor was disabled in June, the U.S. said it would not delist the country until it agreed to an intrusive verification regime. But under a face-saving compromise proposed by Hill, the agreement could be deposited with the Chinese hosts of the six-nation talks and announced at the same time as the delisting. When that point is reached, McCormack said North Korea would be required to halt and reverse its recent actions. [End of report]
Now if you have been reading my blog all this while, you should remember I did talk about the issue in one of my previous post in which I said that the wise thing for the U.S. to do right now is that they remove North Korea from the terror blacklist. When I said that, I didnt mean that they should just listen to North Korea demands and do as they are told in order to achieve their goal which is to have a North Korea free of nuclear weapons. Instead, what I meant was that they should remove them from the list if only the North Koreans are willing to verify the disarmament process. I remember saying that in my previous post, the U.S. should just remove the Koreans from the list despite not achieving the verification process, but I would like to retract my statement. Yes, the North Koreans are expressing their feelings of anger towards the U.S. and other parties involved in the denuclearization talks by starting back their nuclear reactor, in particular that of Yongbyon, but I still think they need the aid more that are being offered to them as part of the exchange for their denuclearization of nuclear weapons. I think the North Koreans are just using the threat of restarting their nuclear reactor in order to achieve their own goal which is to have the U.S. removing it from the terror blacklist, but one that should be taken seriously. It is very important that the U.S. and the other parties involved don't lose the gains that have been achieved to get to the position that they are in right now. That is why you saw the chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill, returned from a trip to North Korea late last week to somehow strike a deal that would go well with both the U.S. and North Korea.
Im not sure what were being discussed during the meeting, or whether there were any progress that were made. It does seem that is the case though as you can read from the report, the U.S. is considering to remove North Korea from the terror blacklist. If that were to happen, it would solely be base on the U.S. decision alone I think as the State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that no decision has been taken yet on delisting North Korea, after saying that the United States and its negotiating partners were still discussing verification steps. It is important that all parties agree on the decision to remove North Korea from the terror blacklist because all of them play a very important role on the matter, but it seems like there is going to be a major hurdle in getting the deal through and that hurdle comes in the form of Japan. You can read on the report that said Japan reason for resisting the move could be because the cases of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and '80s are not resolved yet. I believe that it would be really unfortunate if any decision, which is aimed at easing the tension, is being derail for such a thing. I dont think Japan should be putting its national interest into the entire matter as it could affect a new agreement being agreed upon. Whatever external problems they have with Pyongyang should be discuss and settle by themselves.
Right now, Im not sure whether the delisting of North Korea will actually go through or not. I am expecting it to go through without any problems. I dont really have any problem with the move as the removal is provisional and North Korea will be put back on the terror blacklist if it doesn't comply with the inspections. The main aim for everybody right now is that they should not allow Pyongyang to restart the Yongbyon reactor because that would mean disaster once again. Ive read somewhere today that the verification would at present cover only the North's admitted plutonium bomb-making programme, and not a suspected secret enriched uranium programme. I dont think the verification plans is perfect yet, but we should take things one at a time. Its is a very complicated issue and whatever that can be achieved for the good should be look at as only the first step. There are more things that needs to be done, but we should not get ahead with ourselves and do something that could anger North Korea as it will not help the matter further.
*The report was taken from Associated Press.
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