Richard
08-04-2009, 05:55
Last former US President to visit DPRK was Jimmy Carter - they've probably never forgiven us for that one. :rolleyes:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Bill Clinton in North Korea to Seek Release of U.S. Reporters
Mark Landler and Peter Baker, NYT, 4 Aug 2009
Former President Bill Clinton landed in North Korea on Tuesday to negotiate the release of two American television journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, according to a person briefed on the mission.
Mr. Clinton flew into Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in an unmarked jet early Tuesday morning local time, Central TV, a North Korean station, reported. The White House declined to comment.
Citing television footage from Pyongyang, The Associated Press said Mr. Clinton was greeted at the airport by North Korean officials including the chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan and Yang Hyong-sop, vice parliamentary speaker. The footage showed him smiling and bowing as a young girl presented him with flowers.
The reported presence of the nuclear negotiator raised the question of whether talks would range beyond the fate of the two journalists to the broader relationship centering on North Korea’s nuclear program. The journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, were detained by soldiers on March 17 near the North Korean border with China. In June, they were sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean prison camp for “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry.”
The Obama administration had been considering for weeks whether to send a special envoy to North Korea.
The choice of Mr. Clinton would mark his first public mission on behalf of the administration. His wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been deeply involved in the journalists’ case.
Mr. Clinton is the first former American president to travel to North Korea since 1994, when Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang — with Mr. Clinton’s half-hearted blessing — to try to strike a deal to suspend the North’s nuclear work in return for concessions from the United States. Ultimately that led to the 1994 nuclear accord, which froze North Korea’s production of plutonium until the deal fell apart in 2003.
As president, Mr. Clinton was initially ambivalent about Mr. Carter’s intervention. But Mr. Carter’s trip also proved that a former president could break a logjam, and Mr. Clinton has some cards to play with the North, because he came close to traveling to the country in December, 2000, the last days of his presidency, in hopes of striking a deal to contain North Korea’s missiles as well. Mr. Clinton decided not to go because the deal was not pre-cooked, and his advisers feared he would be appearing desperate for an end-of-presidency deal.
Relations with the North have descended rapidly since then. Under the Bush administration, the North exited the 1994 agreement, harvested enough plutonium for approximately eight nuclear weapons, and tested one. Mr. Obama never had time to get talks off the ground with the North before it conducted a second nuclear test and terminated the one significant deal it struck with the Bush administration. It is in the process of restarting its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon.
The big unknown of this trip is whether Mr. Clinton can also jump-start the broader relationship, at a time of apparent succession struggle in North Korea. It seemed questionable that the North Koreans would allow him to meet the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il, who suffered a stroke last summer and appears to be in continued poor health.
In fact, the jailing of Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee came amid a period of heightened tension between North Korea and the United States since Pyongyang tested that second nuclear device in May and then launched several ballistic missiles.
In recent months, the White House has marshaled support at the United Nations for strict sanctions against the North Korean government, including a halt to all weapons sales and a crackdown on its financial ties.
But the administration has tried to keep its diplomatic campaign separate from this case, which American officials have portrayed as a humanitarian issue, appealing to North Korea to return the women to their families.
“Their detainment is not something that we’ve linked to other issues, and we hope the North Koreans don’t do that, either,” the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said to reporters in June.
At the time they were detained, Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were on a reporting assignment from Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former vice president. They were researching a report about North Korean women sold through human traffickers and refugees who had fled to search for food in China.
The administration initially said the charges against the women were “baseless.” But last month, Mrs. Clinton said the United States was now seeking “amnesty” for the women, signaling a readiness to acknowledge some degree of culpability in return for their freedom.
“The two journalists and their families have expressed great remorse for this incident, and I think everyone is very sorry that it happened,” Mrs. Clinton said in early July. “What we hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty through the North Korean system and be allowed to return home to their families as soon as possible.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/world/asia/05korea.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Bill Clinton in North Korea to Seek Release of U.S. Reporters
Mark Landler and Peter Baker, NYT, 4 Aug 2009
Former President Bill Clinton landed in North Korea on Tuesday to negotiate the release of two American television journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, according to a person briefed on the mission.
Mr. Clinton flew into Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in an unmarked jet early Tuesday morning local time, Central TV, a North Korean station, reported. The White House declined to comment.
Citing television footage from Pyongyang, The Associated Press said Mr. Clinton was greeted at the airport by North Korean officials including the chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan and Yang Hyong-sop, vice parliamentary speaker. The footage showed him smiling and bowing as a young girl presented him with flowers.
The reported presence of the nuclear negotiator raised the question of whether talks would range beyond the fate of the two journalists to the broader relationship centering on North Korea’s nuclear program. The journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, were detained by soldiers on March 17 near the North Korean border with China. In June, they were sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean prison camp for “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry.”
The Obama administration had been considering for weeks whether to send a special envoy to North Korea.
The choice of Mr. Clinton would mark his first public mission on behalf of the administration. His wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been deeply involved in the journalists’ case.
Mr. Clinton is the first former American president to travel to North Korea since 1994, when Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang — with Mr. Clinton’s half-hearted blessing — to try to strike a deal to suspend the North’s nuclear work in return for concessions from the United States. Ultimately that led to the 1994 nuclear accord, which froze North Korea’s production of plutonium until the deal fell apart in 2003.
As president, Mr. Clinton was initially ambivalent about Mr. Carter’s intervention. But Mr. Carter’s trip also proved that a former president could break a logjam, and Mr. Clinton has some cards to play with the North, because he came close to traveling to the country in December, 2000, the last days of his presidency, in hopes of striking a deal to contain North Korea’s missiles as well. Mr. Clinton decided not to go because the deal was not pre-cooked, and his advisers feared he would be appearing desperate for an end-of-presidency deal.
Relations with the North have descended rapidly since then. Under the Bush administration, the North exited the 1994 agreement, harvested enough plutonium for approximately eight nuclear weapons, and tested one. Mr. Obama never had time to get talks off the ground with the North before it conducted a second nuclear test and terminated the one significant deal it struck with the Bush administration. It is in the process of restarting its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon.
The big unknown of this trip is whether Mr. Clinton can also jump-start the broader relationship, at a time of apparent succession struggle in North Korea. It seemed questionable that the North Koreans would allow him to meet the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il, who suffered a stroke last summer and appears to be in continued poor health.
In fact, the jailing of Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee came amid a period of heightened tension between North Korea and the United States since Pyongyang tested that second nuclear device in May and then launched several ballistic missiles.
In recent months, the White House has marshaled support at the United Nations for strict sanctions against the North Korean government, including a halt to all weapons sales and a crackdown on its financial ties.
But the administration has tried to keep its diplomatic campaign separate from this case, which American officials have portrayed as a humanitarian issue, appealing to North Korea to return the women to their families.
“Their detainment is not something that we’ve linked to other issues, and we hope the North Koreans don’t do that, either,” the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said to reporters in June.
At the time they were detained, Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were on a reporting assignment from Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former vice president. They were researching a report about North Korean women sold through human traffickers and refugees who had fled to search for food in China.
The administration initially said the charges against the women were “baseless.” But last month, Mrs. Clinton said the United States was now seeking “amnesty” for the women, signaling a readiness to acknowledge some degree of culpability in return for their freedom.
“The two journalists and their families have expressed great remorse for this incident, and I think everyone is very sorry that it happened,” Mrs. Clinton said in early July. “What we hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty through the North Korean system and be allowed to return home to their families as soon as possible.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/world/asia/05korea.html?partner=rss&emc=rss