[Richard]

Round and round we go...

Richard's $.02

North Korea May Go Back Onto Terrorist List
Derrick Henry, NYT, 7 Jun 2009

The United States is looking at restoring North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Sunday.

“We’re going to look at it,” Ms. Clinton said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” “There’s a process for it. Obviously, we would want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism.”

Ms. Clinton, speaking in a taped interview, was asked to respond to a letter from several senators asking the Obama administration to immediately return North Korea to the list after its recent weapons tests. The letter, which was signed by eight Republican senators and made public on Tuesday, insisted that North Korea “never ended the activities for which it was listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.” Restoring North Korea to the list would prevent access to loans and other financing that could be used to pursue “their destabilizing activities,” the letter said.

It cited North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests in May, which have raised concerns of the stability of the region. The letter also pointed to North Korea’s announcement that it no longer felt bound by the 1953 armistice that the United Nations negotiated to end the Korean War. Technically, North Korea and South Korea have remained at war for more than 50 years, because the armistice was never replaced with a final peace treaty.

Ms. Clinton said that the Obama administration was taking the senators’ letter seriously.

“Obviously, they were taken off of the list for a purpose, and that purpose is being thwarted by their actions,” Ms. Clinton said of North Korea.

President Bush in October 2008 removed North Korea from the blacklist after it agreed to a compromise plan to let American and other inspectors verify that it is abandoning its weapons program. That action was a bid to salvage a fragile nuclear deal that seemed on the verge of collapse.

The decision to remove North Korea from the terror list was a dramatic moment for President Bush, who had called the country part of an “axis of evil” and had only reluctantly ordered administration officials to engage in negotiations, saying that the United States had made deals with the nation’s leaders before without winning enough concessions.

Asked if she had seen recent evidence of North Korea’s support of international terrorism, Ms. Clinton said “we’re just beginning to look at it. I don’t have an answer for you right now.”

Ms. Clinton said that she expected North Korea’s aggressive behavior would bring a strong sanctions resolution from the United Nations Security Council, with the support of Russia and China. Those nations in past have balked at such measures and they hold veto powers in the council.

Ms. Clinton did not specify if those sanctions might include giving the U.N. the ability to board North Korean ships, an action North Korea has warned it would consider an act of war.

“We are working very hard to create a mechanism where we can interdict North Korean shipments,” Ms. Clinton said.

When asked about what the consequences might be if North Korea were to attempt to ship nuclear weapons elsewhere, Ms. Clinton said the United States would try to prevent it and work to cut off the impoverished nation’s flow of money.

“If we do not take significant and effective action against the North Koreans now, we’ll spark an arms race in northeast Asia. I don’t think anybody wants to see that,” she said.

Ms. Clinton also said that the United States has been monitoring reports that Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator, has designated his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. Some observers think that the dictator ordered the recent nuclear test in hopes of leaving his son in control of a country that has cemented its status as a nuclear-weapons state.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/wo...er=rss&emc=rss