December 23, 2002
Where's the UN?
North Korea has removed the seals and disabled the monitoring cameras the IAEA placed upon nuclear facilities as part of the 1994 agreement to abandon its nuclear weapon program (which North Korea now admits it secretly violated). The only point in doing so is to reprocess the spent fuel into plutonium based nuclear bombs. What's the UN response? It deplores the action. No word on what it's going to do about it. Of course, all eyes are on Washington DC to find out what George Bush is going to do about it, not on Kofi Annan. Why would they be - without a real military to back it up, the UN is limited to making tut-tut noises and issuing bland statements. Heck, the new President of South Korea said that his country might remain neutral in a conflict between the US and North Korea - which I guess means he'd be happy for the US to eliminate the crazy dictator to the North, he just prefer that North Korea not kill any of South Koreans in the process.
We're assured by many people reluctant or opposed to attacking Iraq that what we need there is clear evidence that Iraq is intending to build weapons of mass destruction in violation of agreements and binding UN resolutions, and then they would support a war. Will they support war as an option against North Korea, which we believe to already possess two nuclear bombs and is trying to build more in violation of UN monitored agreements?
Posted by Kevin Murphy at December 23, 2002 12:45 PM | International Politics
