U.N.: N. Korea has 'just weeks'

[GePap]

China would most likely veto any resolutions that called for comprehensive sanctions, since they don't want a refugee crisis on their Northeast provinces and more N.koreans running for embassies in Beijing. So any resolution that came to the fore would demand that things be doen, but say very little about enforcement.

More interesting is whether the N.koreans pull out of the NPT.

Ned: China does no worry about a nuclear armed S.Korea, given their ever improving relations. Any Korean (north or south) nuke is always more likely to face Tokyo than Beijing. It's a nuclear Japan that China fears. (ditto for the rest of Asia)

[Ned]

Well the real problem for America being there on the DMZ is the real possibilty of WWIII. If NK attacks, we will surely defeat that attack and carry the battle into the North. At that time, China may intervene again. This could have very unforseen consequences.

If, out of fear of a Chineses intervention, we desist in carrying our counteroffensive into the North, we could be in what amounts to another Vietnam war. It would be exactly like the Vietnam War if the people of South Korea become anti-American and allow the NK's to operate freely in the South attacking us.

[Graag]

But that's the beauty of North Korea, the US doesn't have to do anything they starve themselves! A fully self starving, self embargoing bad guy, gotta love that.

But seriously... I see this NK thing as a possible way out for Iraq.

NK having nukes may well be more of a threat to the US than Iraq.
Saddam almost certainly is a good while from having nukes, whilst NK may already have them... Saddam can only do so much damage with his dodgy chemical weapons, and he isn't half as mad as Kim Jong-il. The likelihood of Saddam ****ing up the middle-east entirely with chemical weapons is small, I think he genuinely cares about his islamic brothers, and wouldn't risk attacking Israel for fear of huge and indescriminate retaliations.
Kim Jong-il, on the other hand, is a mad as bollocks. He could well attack SK, killing 37000 US troops, or attack Japan or China, pretty much ****ing the whole of asia, and therefore the world.

[Ned]

The problem, Graag, is what the f*ck do we do about NK? Because of China, in particular, we simply do not have a free hand to do anything.

[Graag]

I agree Ned. A very, very sticky situation.

The US, I imagine, will buy them off for now, possibly in secret. But this seems to me one of the most awkward diplomatic siutations since Cuba. I would be very surprised if the US isn't in heavy negotations with China and is drawing up plans to go into NK. At very least they are really going to have to go all out on NK, diplomatically or militarily, which is why I think Iraq will be on the back burner until NK has been dealt with.

[Ned]

Graag, I notice you are from the UK. I think when we speak on foreign policy terms, it not the US does this or the UK does that, it is "we" do this or "we" that. The US and the UK continue to be extremely close allies, and obviously we consult each other on forerign policy issues.

So it is not what the US should do on the issue of NK, it is what "we" should do, the US and the UK.

[Graag]

I do tend to agree, Ned, but in this instanse the US seems to have more at stake, due to its high level of involvement in Korea.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Andrew1999
Look, it's quite simple. North Korea has the ability to hurt the U.S. Iraq doesn't. Therefore, the U.S. will fight Iraq but not North Korea. The lesson to anyone who might possibly end up on America's "Axis of Evil" list is to buy, beg, borrow, or steal nuclear weapons as soon as possible. And today's friends can be easily converted into tomorrow's enemies, so that's a pretty long list of countries that will want nuclear weapons.

Yeheheheees! You got it.

[Ned]

Comrade Tribune, were we able to proceed without considering China, Russia and South Korea, I am sure NK would be dead meat. They are belicose because they know they have protectors.

[Ned]

Well, NK has called the UN's bluff.

What will the Security Council do?

SEOUL, Jan. 10 (Friday) – North Korea today asserted that it was pulling out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of global efforts to halt the spread of atomic weapons, while rebuffing demands that it allow a return of U.N. inspectors to a reactor capable of producing nuclear materials that could be used to build a bomb.

In a statement released by North Korea's official news agency this afternoon, the insular Communist country claimed "freedom from the binding force of the safeguards accord with the International Atomic Energy Agency," the U.N. watchdog that monitors the 1970 treaty, which has more than 180 countries as signatories.

Although the treaty itself lays out a withdrawal process that takes 90 days, North Korea asserted that its withdrawal would take effect immediately. Some analysts suggested North Korea could use an identical announcement it made in March 1993 and later suspended to make the claim that the required 90 days had already passed.

Shortly after the announcement, Seoul's YTN television cited a North Korean envoy to China who said North Korea would be willing to reverse its decision if the United States and its allies resumed shipments of fuel oil. Those shipments were halted following disclosures in October that North Korea had been secretly working to enrich uranium that could be used in nuclear weapons in violation of the 1994 deal that resolved the last such crisis on the Korean Peninsula.