The US refused direct talks for a few years. Bush was afraid Kim and his perm would eat his lunch. It would only make sense to include all the relevent parties and powers to the table.
OK, here's a fun game for you all. Without any googling, can you guess correctly who's who in this photo? (Nothing in the caption says anything about the IDs of these six guys) Let me try first. From left to right: 1. US 2. S Korea 3. N Korea 4. China 5. Japan 6. Russia I am 100% sure about 1 and 6. I am also certain neither 3 nor 5 is Chinese. Everything else is a guess. Any other takers?
What are the odds of getting it all wrong from #2 to #5? One in twenty-four! I guess my "international experience" in facial recognition meant sh*t.
I think being relatively even handed you'd admit that the anti-bush crowd was quick to downplay this development and in case its good give credit to anyone but the administration. I don't like Bush but I can understand a Bush supporters grievance here. Look at wnes recent post. -If its good then its because of the 6 nation group. -If the administration is responsible for the 6 nations group then they could have done the same thing in bilateral talks. -If bilateral talks would have worked it wouldn't be because Bush was involved. -If Bush was involved then he caused the problem anyway. Not saying bigtexx or basso didn't do the same type of stuff with Clinton, but people need to realize their hedging makes their credibility weaker, not stronger. Wnes, I am pretty sure #1 and #6 are not Chinese, although I could be wrong. Other than that I have no idea!
Hehe, to counter the rush to glorifying Bush by basso and co., my post serves to offer a fair and balanced view. Other than Russia, South Korea, China, and Japan have as much high stakes as US has in urging North Korea to rejoin the NPT. The unwillingness of direct dialogue with North Korea from Bush administration only exacerbated the untrust between the two countries, underscoring the rigidness of the "with-us-or-against-us" Bush doctrine. If it had not been for the repeated effort by PRC and its last minute proposal to salvage the negotiation, Bush would have still had his hands tied on this thorny issue.
In other news: [update] North Korea no longer had enough fissile material to build new atomic bombs so they decided this was the perfect time to accept money, oil, and food from the United States.
I disagree. What, do you think, was the motive NOT to hold bilateral talks? Why did the administration insist on multilateral talks including those countries you've listed that have a large stake in the outcome? They stated reason is that it would simply repeat the mistakes made in the last round ('94) of negotiations under Clinton - an agreement which the North Koreans broke.
now, north korea is saying they won't give up their nuclear arms programs until they get a civilian nuclear reactor. wow...that was fast. a false declaration is an understatement.
I have no idea why North Korea, a barely functional state, punking the globe's only superpower again, is deemed great news. They probably would have been able to play Kerry too, to be fair, but seriously, these guys just keep playing us and keep winning. Fortunately other embarrassments keep this embarrassment out of the news.
well maybe if we had tons of our troops all around korea, they wouldnt be able to punk the world left and right, but then again we have to liberate those iraqi's from the evil saddam hussein first.
Does NK want us to fund and build the light-water reactor? If so, then I've got two words for them: F*** Y**!
