Behind the Bush administration’s self-proclaimed strategy of "tailored containment" toward north Korea, the agency said, is a push to "total economic sanctions aimed at isolating and stifling the DPRK."

Four days earlier Washington had repeated its refusal to enter into negotiations with north Korea, a government it has branded as a member of an "axis of evil"--along with Iran and Iraq--to justify its long-standing policy of aggression.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) carried out its part of the U.S.-dictated script by threatening to report north Korea to the UN Security Council after two of its "inspectors" were finally expelled from the Yongbyon nuclear site.

In the face of the Bush administration’s refusal to talk, withholding of agreed-on food and fuel shipments, and stepped-up hostile propaganda, Pyongyang reiterated its readiness to defend its territory. Washington "will have to pay a very high price" for any "reckless acts," it emphasized.

The U.S. military command maintains 37,000 troops in south Korea, along with 40,000 in Japan. The Japanese port of Yokosuka houses the base of the nuclear-armed Seventh Fleet.

Washington stepped up its actions and threats against the workers state after U.S. officials announced in mid-October that north Korea had carried out a program to extract enriched uranium as part of longer-term nuclear weapons research. In the ensuing controversy, the U.S. government halted shipments of oil to north Korea, an action followed by the governments of Japan and south Korea. The shipments were part of the 1994 Agreed Framework, under which the three governments also promised to assist in the construction of nuclear power reactors. In exchange, Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons programs.  
 
Seizure of north Korean ship
The dispute escalated further in early December after the Spanish and German navies intercepted a north Korean merchant ship in the Indian Ocean and handed it over to U.S. officers--an incident Pyongyang described as an act of "piracy" in the January 7 statement. The vessel was released at the insistence of Yemen, which had legally contracted to buy the cargo of missiles.

Lacking oil to help meet its power needs, the north Korean government announced in December that it would restart a small reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear power facility. Just before Christmas, north Korean officials removed monitoring equipment installed by the IAEA and expelled two of its "inspectors." On January 7, Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency’s director general, gave the north "one more chance" to readmit the inspectors before referring the matter to the imperialist-dominated UN Security Council.

U.S. officials claim the Yongbyon unit can reprocess enough plutonium to manufacture one nuclear weapon a year. The inflated figure of 50 weapons that U.S. government spokespeople have bandied about would only be credible if two unfinished reactors at the same site were brought online.  
 
U.S. wields food weapon
Washington has also continued to exploit the north’s chronic food shortages, withholding approval of grain shipments that have been requested by relief agencies.

"We’re very concerned," said a UN World Food Program official. "This is a population that is suffering." Rebutting the claims of U.S. authorities, another food program official said, "We have relatively good confidence that the food is reaching the people who need it." The UN has appealed for 512,000 tons of food--80,000 of it on an emergency basis.

Until this winter, Washington had supplied 20 percent to 30 percent of the food shipped under the program. Tokyo cut off food aid last year, while the south Korean regime has also reduced its supplies.

South Korean president Kim Dae Jung--whose government knows it would find itself extremely vulnerable in any military conflict between Washington and north Korea--has publicly differed with the U.S. diplomatic freeze and "tailored containment" policy. "Pressure and isolation have never been successful," he said December 30. "We will firmly oppose north Korea’s nuclear arms program, but no matter what, we will pursue a peaceful solution," he added. "We cannot go to war with north Korea."

In posturing as a critic of the Bush administration’s focus on waging war against Iraq, Democratic politician Warren Christopher, who served as secretary of state under the Clinton administration, argued for an even more aggressive stance against north Korea. In a December 31 column in the New York Times he wrote, "Not only is North Korea much further along than Iraq in building nuclear weapons but, by virtue of its longer-range missiles, it has a greater delivery capability.... We must recognize that the effort of removing [Saddam Hussein] right now may well distract us from dealing with graver threats."

Supporting the White House’s course, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, wrote in a January 3 column that "unlike Iraq, [north Korea] has a serious army, a million strong and possessing thousands of artillery tubes...that can reach --and reduce--Seoul.... So the administration has chosen a strategy of economic and diplomatic isolation. The idea is to squeeze the North Korean regime to the point where it can no longer function."

North Korea’s ambassador to China said on January 3, "The Bush administration is now talking about dialogue, that they have no intention of attacking the DPRK--but who can believe these words?"
 
 
Related articles:
Oppose threats against north Korea
South Korea: acquittal of U.S. GIs fuels outrage  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home