Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Bill Richardson scores an apparent breakthrough in North Korea

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Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) has, somewhat unexpectedly, scored a major concession from North Korea’s government.  NBC is reporting that Richardson, who is in North Korea on a mission to recover remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean War, has apparently negotiated a deal whereby North Korea will re-admit UN nuclear inspectors into the country, and will begin dismantling its reactors, within 30 days.

Richardson’s mission was approved in advance by the White House, so EaBo can settle down.

If Bill Richardson can come back to the US and say that he’s the guy who got the North Koreans to shut down their reactors, well, wow.  As always with North Korea, it remains to be seen whether they follow through.  But if they do, again, wow.

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  1. Bill Richardson cooperating with the Bush Administration for the good of the country.

      • …had not threatened NKorea by naming it part of his silly “axis of evil” it is highly unlikely that the NKoreans would have undertaken their nuclear weapon project.

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        In other words, it is your petulent child pResident who is likely to blame for the state of affairs regarding NKorea.  If you rattle the saber, you do get repercussions.

        • Did not North Korea, have a nuclear weapons project during the Clinton Administration.  Did not North Korea restart that project before our President(after all he is the President of the United States, all of them) called them a member of the Axis of Evil?  Revisionist history is nice, but it is still revisionist.

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          What the left doesn’t either a) seem to admit, or b) want to admit is that everything changed on 9/11. 

          • Under Bush I?  Pre-Clinton the CIA has estimated that they had made at least two.  We also knew they had two plutonium producing reactors which they were building and one was already on-line.

          • …since you have confirmed elsewhere that you have come to the conclusion that you would have to provide some evidence for your statement, just what is your evidence for your conclusion that

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            Did not North Korea, have a nuclear weapons project during the Clinton Administration.

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            As far as I could tell, NKorea had a nuclear power project under which the spent fuel rods* would be placed under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Ageny–an agency of the UN) supervision.  That isn’t exactly a nuclear weapons project, is it?

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            NKorea allowed the IAEA to manage the spent fuel rods, until the Bush II malAdministration declared NKorea to be part of the “axis of evil.”  It was at that point that the NKoreans kicked the IAEA out.  More evidence of the stupidity of your petulent child pResident.

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            *Lest anyone wonder, spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants are a significant source of plutonium, a sourse of fissile material for nuclear weapons.  It is quite a simple matter to separate the plutonium from the uranium.  And that’s probably what the NKoreans probably did with their most recent bomb.

            • NoKo was gonna do the same thing no matter who was president or what they said:  build nukes and blackmail us for money not to build them.  It’s the only viable economic model for their state.

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              Bush is still a ham-handed idiot, but it’s not like the North Korean government was all about cooperation before that.  This is the same nut who used to kidnap Japanese actors and make them star in home-made Bond movies with him.

              • …you are a mind-reader. 

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                NoKo was gonna do the same thing no matter who was president or what they said…

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                And, moreover, that you are a reader of NKorean minds.

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                I’ll remember that the next time I read one of your comments.

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                /sarcasm

            • Link to back-up

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              The Joint Declaration on denuclearization was initialed on December 31, 1991. It forbade both sides to test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons and forbade the possession of nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities. A procedure for inter-Korean inspection was to be organized and a North-South Joint Nuclear Control Commission (JNCC) was mandated with verification of the denuclearization of the peninsula.

              On January 30, 1992, the DPRK also signed a nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA, as it had pledged to do in 1985 when acceding to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This safeguards agreement allowed IAEA inspections to begin in June 1992. In March 1992, the JNCC was established in accordance with the joint declaration, but subsequent meetings failed to reach agreement on the main issue of establishing a bilateral inspection regime.

              As the 1990s progressed, concern over the North’s nuclear program became a major issue in North-South relations and between North Korea and the US. The lack of progress on implementation of the joint nuclear declaration’s provision for an inter-Korean nuclear inspection regime led to reinstatement of the US-South Korea Team Spirit military exercise for 1993. The situation worsened rapidly when North Korea, in January 1993, refused IAEA access to two suspected nuclear waste sites and then announced in March 1993 its intent to withdraw from the NPT. During the next 2 years, the US held direct talks with the DPRK that resulted in a series of agreements on nuclear matters.

              • …unfortunately, it doesn’t really provide evidence for what I presume your case is.

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                GlobalSecurity.org is a nice web site.  I’ve delved in there a few times.  It seems to be mostly declassified US Defense Department documents. 

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                But, regardless.  Your linked-to document does not suggest much of what occurred between 1994 (the “agreed-to framework”) and 2002 (“Axis of evil” speech).  I’m not going to repeat it here, but take a look at the first paragraph under the “Stockpile estimates” on your cited web page and note very carefully that that paragraph refers to plutonium that may have been extracted from spent fuel rods that had been under international (IAEA) supervision. 

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                Exactly as I wrote.

      • That the remains that are about to be repatriated are of GI’s who were very likely murdered by the N. Koreans as opposed to KIA.

      • Americans seem to think that football and baseball players are heroes (so called).

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        I always thought that someone like John Basilone was a patriot.

      • But on North Korea, if this deal is consumated, we will essentially be back to where we were on January 20 2000–UN inspectors and no nukes in exchange for aid.

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        So maybe what was not good then is good now. Or maybe the voices in their heads are telling them something different. Or not. We’ll see what they do. It’s a mistake to look for rationality.

  3. Someone had to go on the USS Pueblo and tour the ship with a smile while being publicly embarrassed by N. Korea.  This was probably the deal to get our soldiers back.  Richardson stepped up, but at the same time the Bushies probably got more than they bargained for when Bill came back with a nuclear deal.  Something tells me the Bill knew exactly what he was doing.  The time was ripe, the “latest” deadline was Saturday, there were already concessions on the table to release frozen funds which held up talks earlier.  But you know what?  He closed the deal.  If this holds up, Richardson pulled off quite a coup.

  4. If I were Richardson, I’d be pissed that this isn’t on the front page of NYTimes.com with Richardson’s name plastered all over it, or for that matter that neither DailyKos nor MyDD.com seems to have even so much as a diary about it recommended. As of this writing, it isn’t a headline at CNN’s world section, nor it’s politics section. How is this not major news for his campaign?

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    This isn’t a case of other major events trumping his accomplishment. He can’t get press over Google’s Darfur project (which, by the way, is really interesting). This isn’t the case of humility — according to the Hill article you site he headed the delegation. His staff should be all over this, especially in the wake of a Pelosi trip. And he should be getting some press help from Pelosi and the House Democrats because this ought to tie into the narrative that Democrats are better at diplomacy than Republicans. It’s not like it’s unimportant to the Richardson campaign — it’s the first thing you see when you go to his website. And I’m disinclined to believe that this is a bias in the media or that it isn’t news. So what’s going on?

  5. …Richardson as President.  His resume really is pretty good, and he does seem to behave as an adult.  He isn’t perfect, but he is head and shoulders above the others*.

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    *This is not meant to denigrate Obama, but he is still something of an enigma.

    • Richardson is the most experienced Democratic presidential candidate we’ve had in years, impressive resume and he continues to build on it, but I still think that Obama has the true rhetoric and vision and leadership qualities that can bridge the partisan divide and help us through the next 8 long years of post-Bush syndrome, that said I think Richardson is ideally suited to be a very activist Vice President like Gore and to be sent as a trouble shooter on issues like this, I also think he can carry NM, CO and some other important states, and having a black-hispanic ticket would be a historic one. That said if Obama fizzles Richardson is my next choice.

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