Editorial: North Korea, Iraq
19 October 2002
http://www.arabnews.com/

It appears that North Korea has admitted to US officials that, despite its commitments enshrined in a 1994 agreement, it has undertaken a program to enrich nuclear fuel as part of a covert drive to acquire nuclear weapons.

North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, comprise the states branded by Washington as an “axis of evil”. President Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was also known to be busy trying to acquire a nuclear capability, but it is widely believed that UN weapons inspectors detected and then destroyed most of the equipment needed to create a nuclear bomb. The new UN inspection regime probably stands a good chance of discovering and destroying any new Iraqi nuclear program.

North Korea, also like Iraq, has invaded a neighbor and obliged the UN, led by American forces, to intervene massively. North Korea’s past and present leaders, Kim il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-il are like Iraq’s dictator, the subject of official personality cults.

So, are the 40,000 US troops based in South Korea being quietly put on a war footing and is Washington squaring up for a second attack on an axis of evil, one which, presumably, it believes subscribes to and supports international terrorism? Apparently not. If the US has the slightest intention of behaving to North Korea the same way that it is to Iraq, there was precious little indication of it in the hours after the North Koreans finally confirmed what the world at large had long suspected. Many White House watchers indeed detected confusion within the US administration. This is odd for a president who tells us that he is embarking upon an aggressive campaign based upon principles. It is hard to see how the principles could be applied differently toward Iraq and North Korea.

A further anomaly in Washington’s behavior came with the spin that was put on Pyongyang’s nuclear admissions. Far from being outraged that the North Koreans had completely broken solemn and binding assurances, administration officials were saying that maybe now that Pyongyang’s program was out in the open, it was a positive step. This was echoed by the South Korean government, who averred that the only reasonable course was to continue to negotiate with their northern cousins.

All of a sudden, everyone is ignoring that Pyongyang is a renegade regime which has kidnapped foreign tourists, murdered its own officials on foreign trips, very probably blown up an international airliner, sunk South Korean fishing boats as recently as three months ago, and demonstrated that any agreement to which it puts its name is worthless. Yet Washington and Seoul seem prepared to keep talking.

This is odd. One of the main reasons that Washington and London say they need to be prepared to attack Iraq is that time and again Saddam and his ministers have proven duplicitous and slippery in negotiations in which they have been involved. They are masters at playing for time, experts at obstructing at precisely the moment when international will is weakened and extremely good at magnifying their social and economic distress and blaming them on everyone but themselves.

Yet Washington appears glad to talk to one of them while preparing to launch a major assault against the other.