Have six-party talks with North Korea failed?

The Associated Press

Deal or no deal?

Featured Topic | Posted 43 weeks 3 days ago

Have six-party talks with North Korea failed?

When a State Department official last week delivered a speech denouncing North Korea's foot-dragging on pledges to end its nuclear program, the reaction was swift and stern... from the State Department.

The North Korean government issued its own criticisms this week. North Korea on Tuesday again blamed Washington for a deadlocked denuclearization deal and said it would not retreat in the face of "U.S. confrontation engineered by hardliners."

After years of negotiations and promises, posturing and threats, have the six-party talks with North Korea bombed?

Ben likes: Man bites dog

Claudia Rosett/The Rosett Report

The envoy who finally stood up and said the right thing wasn't Chris Hill, who has spent the past year purveying the bizarre calculus that as long as the U.S. keeps its side of the bargain in the Six-Party talks on North Korea, we’re half way to success. It was Jay Lefkowitz, special envoy for human rights in North Korea.

Lefkowitz spelled out that after four years of Six-Party talks, we’ve got pretty much nothing. Meanwhile, North Korea has conducted an intercontinental ballistic missile test, a nuclear test, and continued brutalizing its own people in ways “deeply offensive to us,” which “should also offend free people around the world.” That speech later disappeared from the State Department's website.

Joel likes: North Korea misses a deadline

USA Today

Certainly, if Kim continues to stall, he should be denied the food, fuel, technology and international respect he craves.
For the moment, however, the Bush administration has had an appropriately low-key, skeptical response to the latest delay. Earlier this year, North Korea missed a deadline to start dismantling the Yongbyon facility, but the process eventually went forward.