N. Korea Abandons Its Nuke Program

So sayeth the Grey Lady:

The top American negotiator with North Korea said today that the country had agreed to disable its main nuclear fuel production facility by the end of the year and to account to international monitors for all of its nuclear programs, including what American intelligence agencies believe was a second, secret program purchased from Pakistan.

At the end of a two-day meeting in Geneva — exactly the kind of one-on-one session that the Bush administration had refused to hold in recent years — Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said that the two sides had agreed on what would be a speedy next step, following action by the North this summer to turn off its main nuclear reactor.

“One thing that we agreed on is that the D.P.R.K. will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programs and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007,” Mr. Hill told reporters in Geneva, according to the Associated Press. He was using the initials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s formal name.

But in a separate news conference, his counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, who heads the North Korean negotiating team, made no mention of an end of the year deadline. He spoke instead of an accord to disable North Korea’s equipment and provide an accounting of its facilities, fuel and weapons in return for what he called “political and economic compensation.”

A few things here. First, the Bush admin. should get credit here. In fact, this continues a series of foreign policy successes since 2001. The Iraq disaster and Iran war-mongering get all the headlines, but Bush convinced Libya to give up its nuclear program, forced the removal and arrest of A.Q. Khan (who had sold weaponry, including nuclear devices, off the shelf to Iran, Libya, N. Korea, and was trying to sell to Saddam) in Pakistan, rallied the international community to put strong pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear program, and has now bribed the D.P.R.K. into abandoning its nuclear ambitions. These are subtle victories, but substantial ones, all of which eluded Pres. Clinton. Some credit is due here.