At the risk of sounding too anti-imperialist, good luck to the DPRK in breaking with the UN spy team. Remember: They "broke" the "deal" with the USA after the US had violated the majority of the 7 points in the original 1994 agreement. That gets, well, no mention at all in all of these articles from the West (which is why I and others should read the DPRK news [called KCNA], even if you don't believe that Kim Jong-il makes the Sun rise each and every morning).
--Macdonald ---------------- (From Sabri Oncu) Top World News 12/24 12:45 North Korea Further Tampers With Monitors, UN Says (Update1) By Mark Drajem Washington, Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea broke more seals on its nuclear facilities and further tampered with surveillance equipment, increasing concern that the nation will develop nuclear weapons, United Nations monitors said. "This rapidly deteriorating situation raises grave non-proliferation concerns," said Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a statement. ElBaradei is also involved in the UN weapons inspections in Iraq. North Korea started work Saturday to repair a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, north of the capital of Pyongyang, indicating the nation will breach a 1994 accord with Western nations to abandon its effort to make a nuclear bomb. The tensions with North Korea, which the U.S. has called a "serious concern," have some analysts and U.S. lawmakers saying that the threat in the Korean peninsula is greater than that from Saddam Hussein in Iraq. "North Korea only deepens its international isolation with these recent actions," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said yesterday. "I'm sure everyone in the international community is seized with the issue." Powell Calls U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has made a round of telephone calls about North Korea to foreign ministers in Japan, South Korea, Russia and China since Saturday, Reeker said. North Korea said it needs the plant for electricity generation. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld yesterday ridiculed that claim, saying, "Their power grid couldn't even absorb that energy." The State Department said spent fuel rods, which North Korea broke a UN seal in order to get to, can't be used to generate electricity. They can be converted into weapons material. So far, seals have been cut and surveillance equipment hampered at three separate facilities at Nyongbyong: at the spent fuel pond, a fuel rod fabrication plant and a reprocessing plant, the UN said. "Unless the (UN) is able to immediately reinstate its safeguards at these facilities it will not be able to provide assurances that (North Korea) is not diverting nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices," the statement said. Food Aid An estimated 6.4 million North Koreans, almost a third of the population, will need international food aid to survive the coming year, the UN said earlier this month. Since North Korea told U.S. officials it had resumed its nuclear weapons program, the U.S., South Korea and Japan have cut off food aid and fuel shipments to the country. "The leadership of the country is currently repressing its people, starving its people," while rebuilding nuclear reactors it can't afford, Rumsfeld said. And Rumsfeld said that the U.S. is capable of fighting a war on two fronts if necessary, and "let there be no doubt about it." Meanwhile North Korea blames "U.S. hawks" for tensions in the region. The nation's defense minister, Kim Il Chol, said the U.S. is "driving the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war," according to Agence France-Presse. Human Bombs All North Korean military officers and their men should "prepare themselves to be human bombs and fighters ready to blow up themselves in order to defend the headquarters of the revolution," the defense minister said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency and cited by AFP. While the U.S. has said that it is capable of fighting both a war in Iraq and taking action necessary to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say the U.S. military may not be capable of fighting on two fronts. U.S. Marine Lieutenant General Robert Magnus, formerly deputy commandant of Marine forces in the Pacific, said if the U.S. found itself in "the middle of a major war with Iraq" it would face problems with an outbreak of hostilities with North Korea. North Korea's defenses are aided by difficult terrain as well as a large conventional military force, and a prospective military campaign there would be "tough stuff," Magnus said in a recent interview. ------------------------------------------- Macdonald Stainsby http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international -- In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
