It looks like the United States is giving in to extortion from North Korea.
BEIJING - North Korea (news - web sites) told a six-nation conference that it has nuclear weapons and has plans to test one, a U.S. official said Thursday. However, other participants said delegates agreed on the need for a second round of talks.…………
The current round of talks are scheduled to end Friday after three days. The United States, North and South Korea (news - web sites), Russia, Japan and China are trying to balance U.S. demands for an end to North Korea’s nuclear program and the communist nation’s insistence on a nonaggression treaty with Washington and humanitarian aid.
“There is a consensus that the process of six-party talks should continue and is useful,” said Wie Sung-rak, director-general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry’s North American Affairs Bureau.
As I said in my 7/11/03 post, North Korea Must Be Stopped:
We have discovered that the North Koreans are very close to achieving a full nuclear weapons program, and they are threatening to attack South Korea, Japan, and the U.S., unless we continue to give them aid. Currently we are engaged in “multilateral discussions” with the North Koreans. This simply means that we are discussing new means by which the North Koreans will extort money from us. It amounts to the United States saying: there is no need for you to develop a nuclear weapons program in order to extort money from us, we will give you money without any such threat, we will allow you to continue to murder and torture your people, free of charge.[Emphasis added]
The United States should pull out of these extortion “negotiations” immediately. By negotiating with a regime that threatens us, we send a message to the enemies of the United States that the way to get what they want (such as power, recognition by the U.S., monetary support, etc.) is to threaten us. While many claim that such negotiations with those that threaten us helps to enhance peace, I maintain that it actually does the opposite. By negotiating with those who threaten us, we grant legitimacy to the dictatorships and terrorist regimes that we are negotiating with. Worst of all, we tell these regimes that all they have to do is threaten the United States and they will get what they want. We say to these enemies of the United States that killing innocent civilians, building weapons of mass destruction, and threatening the world is BENEFICIAL to them. Such a message only emboldens our enemies to build larger forces and make bigger and bigger threats as we continue to give concessions to such threats.
Instead of this ridiculous policy of appeasement, I advocate that the United States eliminate threats BEFORE they become a “crisis.” Also, I believe that United States should not negotiate with any dictatorship or terrorist regime, and should not provide ANY aid whatsoever to any dictatorship, terrorist regime, OR population living under such regimes.
We should immediately end the negotiations with North Korea and eliminate their capability to extort money from the world.
