Washington “opens” to Pyongyang after the nuclear deal,
Beijing (AsiaNews) – The US government has accepted to start direct talks with North Korea in order to establish full diplomatic relations. It has also announced that over the next two months it will initiate procedures to remove Pyongyang from its list of terrorist states and end trade sanctions against that country.
Four months after conducting a nuclear test in an underground mine, North Korea’s Stalinist regime seems to have come out on top from the six-nation talks on its nuclear programme. It has 60 days to shut down its main nuclear facilities at Yongbyong, the only one capable of producing nuclear weapons, in exchange of 50,000 tonnes of oil as an immediate reward.
The regime has agreed to provide a detailed inventory of all the plutonium in its possession, but for this it will receive a million tonnes of fuel oil.
Its industries will be able to keep going and so will its most profitable business: missile sales to Syria, Libya and Iran,
Anonymous diplomatic sources in Seoul have expressed satisfaction for the outcome and have announced new bilateral talks concerning family reunification and trade in border economic zones.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo said that Japan’s government does not believe in the good faith of the Stalinist regime and won’t end the embargo on Japanese exports to that country. Kenichiro Sasae, Japan’s chief negotiator in Beijing, expressed his personal doubts about the deal’s implementation.
Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan, who was sent to see Kim to convince him to go back to the negotiating table, expressed his congratulation on the positive results achieved in this round, but for Zhang Liangui, expert on North Korea at the Chinese Communist Party's Central Party School, although this “is a step forward [. . .] freezing, suspending, disabling isn't necessarily the same as abandonment. So we still need to discount the possibility that North Korea will really abandon nuclear weapons. That's a much more difficult and long-term issue.”
Meanwhile representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who now will be able to inspect North Korean nuclear facilities, said they are certain that they will find less advanced weapons than thought after the current crisis began on October 9.
Similarly, as much as Kim Jong-il has the atomic bomb, he knows he is dependent upon Chinese benevolence and that any atomic conflict would mean the end of his country.
North Korea’s dictator is not crazy as former Us Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once said. He might pretend to be mad because his survival and that of his regime depend on his ability to blackmail others.
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