North Korea begins to Cave...

[MKSheppard]

[url]http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004 ... _x.htm[url]

N. Korea OKs U.S. visit to complex
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
North Korea has agreed to allow a U.S. delegation that includes a top nuclear scientist to visit its nuclear complex at Yongbyon next week ahead of likely negotiations with its neighbors and the United States. The delegation would be the first to see the site since North Korea expelled foreign weapons inspectors a year ago.

Members of the U.S. delegation say it includes Sig Hecker, director from 1985 to 1997 of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which produced the first U.S. nuclear bomb and still constructs weapons. Hecker has been told he can visit Yongbyon, where the North Koreans restarted a reactor last year and may have reprocessed used fuel to make plutonium for a half dozen bombs.

Jack Pritchard, a former State Department official, and Frank Januzzi, a senior aide to Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will accompany Hecker.

The delegation also is expected to include John Lewis, a China expert from Stanford University, and Keith Luse, a Republican Senate foreign policy aide who previously visited Pyongyang.

An official at the South Korean Foreign Ministry confirmed the development Friday, saying U.S. diplomats had informed South Korea of the mission, which is scheduled Jan. 6-10.

By inviting Hecker to Yongbyon, the regime of Kim Jong Il may want to prove that it has nuclear weapons as a way of bolstering a tough negotiating stance. It also may want to try to defuse tensions by showing that its nuclear sites will be open to inspection if a deal is reached.

If the trip goes off as planned, it will mark the first time outsiders have been allowed inside the reclusive nation's main nuclear complex since United Nations inspectors were expelled Dec. 31, 2002.

The Bush administration, which blocked a congressional delegation's visit to North Korea in October, approved this latest trip; however, according to the Associated Press, the White House is stopping short of facilitating the mission.

Still, even tacit approval by the administration, coupled with a Christmas Eve announcement that the United States would send 60,000 tons of grain to North Korea, could encourage the North Koreans to resume talks about giving up nuclear weapons.

A previous round of talks including China, Japan, South Korea and Russia in August made no progress. Since then, however, President Bush has said that he would be willing to give North Korea a written guarantee not to threaten its security if it gives up its nuclear program. North Korea has offered to suspend its program in return for economic and diplomatic concessions, but the Bush administration has rejected that offer as insufficient. The administration is hoping for a new round of talks early this year in Beijing.

North Korea acknowledged a secret program to enrich uranium for bombs in 2002. U.S. officials said that broke a 1994 deal that froze the North's nuclear program, and the administration ended fuel oil shipments called for by the pact. That provoked the North to expel inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and apparently to resume its bomb-making efforts at Yongbyon.

Though North Korea has claimed to have nuclear bombs, it has never tested or displayed them. The CIA has long said the North Koreans diverted used nuclear fuel at Yongbyon in the early 1990s to make enough plutonium for two bombs. Following the 2002 confrontation with Washington, the North Koreans claim to have reprocessed 8,000 fuel rods, enough to produce plutonium for a half dozen more weapons. But no foreigner has been allowed to verify that claim.

Some experts doubt the Bush administration and the regime of Kim Jong Il can reach a deal. But Iran and Libya have recently agreed to intrusive inspections of nuclear facilities. All three countries want the United States to lift economic and diplomatic sanctions against them.

[Sea Skimmer]

This group doesn't represent the US government in any way, its just another ploy to score points in the western media. I doubt these people will get to see anything but the cafeteria.

[Montcalm]

This group doesn't represent the US government in any way, its just another ploy to score points in the western media. I doubt these people will get to see anything but the cafeteria.

Or some Hollywood type installations

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Has it been a whole year since Kimmy started raving about his uber nukes? Time sure flies when your country lives off tree bark.

[The Aliens]

Media's been downplaying this, luckily. People are thinking that its the same thing as allowing full inspections, its not. They're making a gesture to let them into a power plant and leave, how much they'll be allowed to see is questionable.