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State Dept. Nixes Own Verifiers From NKorea Nuke Watch

Thursday, May 8, 2008 11:47 AM

By: Newsmax Staff Article Font Size

The State Department is excluding its own verifiers from monitoring North Korea’s compliance in dismantling its nuclear program — a move being questioned in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

The Department’s Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Implementation was created by a Republican Congress in 1999 in the spirit of Ronald Reagan’s “trust but verify” policy toward the Soviet Union’s disarmament.

Its mandate, according to the State Department’s Web site, is to provide oversight “on all matters relating to verification or compliance with international arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament agreements and commitments.”

The bureau’s biggest success to date is Libya, where it played a central role in dismantling the country’s WMD programs in 2003, the Journal noted.

But with North Korea, the verifiers “have no voice so far,” one person close to the pocess told the Journal.
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They are not part of the teams negotiating with the North Koreans. No one from the bureau participated in a recent State Department trip to Pyongyang aimed at working out verification issues, and the bureau is not in charge of monitoring the disabling of Korea’s nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Instead, the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs is talking to the North Koreans, selecting experts to work at Yongbyon, and overseeing disablement.

“Now there’s talk that the East Asia bureau – not the verification bureau – will also end up monitoring any final six-party agreement,” the Journal editorial states.

“Not only does East Asia lack the technical expertise to verify a nuclear agreement, its staffers would hardly be eager to find violations in an accord negotiated by their superiors.”

The decision by State Department officials, including Secretary Condoleezza Rice, to exclude their own verifiers is “further reason to doubt their North Korea deal. The diplomats want to deliver a ‘success’ and are afraid that if the verifiers get a close look, they will expose it as a fraud.” The Journal concludes: “If Foggy Bottom won’t trust its own verifiers enough to make them part of any disarmament deal, then the rest of us shouldn’t trust any deal struck by the Bush State Department.”

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They be getting dumber and dumber, it would be amusing, except the incomptentence may kill an awful lot of americans.

I have a hard time believing that President Bush would want a NK agreement which would be a repeat of Jimmmy Carter’s fiasco, but I admit to having doubts. 

Last year’s example should have been a wake-up call to Bush.  Several months before the NK built Syrian reactor was completed, the Israelis sent the CIA satellite photos strongly suggesting the rapid development of a nuclear weapon enrichment facility being built in Syria by the North Koreans.  The CIA dismissed it.  In July of 2007, the CIA issued a report flatly denying that any evidence existed the NK was aiding Syria in the development of such a facility.  Weeks later, the Israelis attacked it and photos from the rubble showed indisputably that not only was a nuclear weapons facility, but that it was far enough along to be able to produce at least 2 muclear weapons by late 2007. 

Another example of this is that even though the UN has “peacekeepers” supposedly keeping Hizbullah out of the border area between Israel and Lebanon, the UN troops (mainly French) are looking the other way as Hizbullah regularly imports Iranian weaponry via the Syrian border.  Israeli intelligence has evidence that the Hizbullah stockpiles have dramatically increased in both number and deadliness of weaponry since the last armed conflict of a couple of years ago.

oldjim - 08 May 2008 05:05 PM

State Dept. Nixes Own Verifiers From NKorea Nuke Watch

Thursday, May 8, 2008 11:47 AM

By: Newsmax Staff Article Font Size




The State Department is excluding its own verifiers from monitoring North Korea’s compliance in dismantling its nuclear program — a move being questioned in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

The Department’s Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Implementation was created by a Republican Congress in 1999 in the spirit of Ronald Reagan’s “trust but verify” policy toward the Soviet Union’s disarmament.

Its mandate, according to the State Department’s Web site, is to provide oversight “on all matters relating to verification or compliance with international arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament agreements and commitments.”

The bureau’s biggest success to date is Libya, where it played a central role in dismantling the country’s WMD programs in 2003, the Journal noted.

But with North Korea, the verifiers “have no voice so far,” one person close to the pocess told the Journal.
r
They are not part of the teams negotiating with the North Koreans. No one from the bureau participated in a recent State Department trip to Pyongyang aimed at working out verification issues, and the bureau is not in charge of monitoring the disabling of Korea’s nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Instead, the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs is talking to the North Koreans, selecting experts to work at Yongbyon, and overseeing disablement.

“Now there’s talk that the East Asia bureau – not the verification bureau – will also end up monitoring any final six-party agreement,” the Journal editorial states.

“Not only does East Asia lack the technical expertise to verify a nuclear agreement, its staffers would hardly be eager to find violations in an accord negotiated by their superiors.”

The decision by State Department officials, including Secretary Condoleezza Rice, to exclude their own verifiers is “further reason to doubt their North Korea deal. The diplomats want to deliver a ‘success’ and are afraid that if the verifiers get a close look, they will expose it as a fraud.” The Journal concludes: “If Foggy Bottom won’t trust its own verifiers enough to make them part of any disarmament deal, then the rest of us shouldn’t trust any deal struck by the Bush State Department.”





© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.


Print Page | Forward Page | E-mail Us


They be getting dumber and dumber, it would be amusing, except the incomptentence may kill an awful lot of americans.

Given the fact that State and CIA are honeycombed with Treachery excluding its bureacracies is probably a good thing.

Let me know when anything endangering Americans more than Clinton’s Loral deal with China occurs.  This is not even in the same universe.

Grey Ghost - 08 May 2008 05:30 PM

I have a hard time believing that President Bush would want a NK agreement which would be a repeat of Jimmmy Carter’s fiasco, but I admit to having doubts. 

Last year’s example should have been a wake-up call to Bush.  Several months before the NK built Syrian reactor was completed, the Israelis sent the CIA satellite photos strongly suggesting the rapid development of a nuclear weapon enrichment facility being built in Syria by the North Koreans.  The CIA dismissed it.  In July of 2007, the CIA issued a report flatly denying that any evidence existed the NK was aiding Syria in the development of such a facility.  Weeks later, the Israelis attacked it and photos from the rubble showed indisputably that not only was a nuclear weapons facility, but that it was far enough along to be able to produce at least 2 muclear weapons by late 2007. 

Another example of this is that even though the UN has “peacekeepers” supposedly keeping Hizbullah out of the border area between Israel and Lebanon, the UN troops (mainly French) are looking the other way as Hizbullah regularly imports Iranian weaponry via the Syrian border.  Israeli intelligence has evidence that the Hizbullah stockpiles have dramatically increased in both number and deadliness of weaponry since the last armed conflict of a couple of years ago.

Who is the CIA working for?  It ain’t President Bush.

Al de Chicago - 08 May 2008 11:00 PM

If the performance of the CIA had taken a drastic decline since 2000, I’d be inclined to agree that it’s President Bush they have problems with.  But the reality is that the CIA has been wrong on almost every major issue since the agency was created.  The nuclearization of both Pakistan and India took the CIA by surprise.  They were caught off guard by the Soviet missile placement in Cuba in the 60s.  Their Bay of Pigs plot was a fiasco.  During the Cold War, they repeatedely overestimated Soviet military and economic strength, and completed ignored the dangerous instability of a variety of Soviet leaders, leading Carter at one point to inform the American public that Communist rule was a reality we’d have to accept and we needed to get over our fear of it.

Al De:
Who is the CIA working for?  It ain’t President Bush.

Well its damm sure not for the welafare and benfit of the citizens of the USA.

International MAFIA, maybe?

Grey Ghost - 08 May 2008 11:35 PM

Al de Chicago - 08 May 2008 11:00 PM

If the performance of the CIA had taken a drastic decline since 2000, I’d be inclined to agree that it’s President Bush they have problems with.  But the reality is that the CIA has been wrong on almost every major issue since the agency was created.  The nuclearization of both Pakistan and India took the CIA by surprise.  They were caught off guard by the Soviet missile placement in Cuba in the 60s.  Their Bay of Pigs plot was a fiasco.  During the Cold War, they repeatedely overestimated Soviet military and economic strength, and completed ignored the dangerous instability of a variety of Soviet leaders, leading Carter at one point to inform the American public that Communist rule was a reality we’d have to accept and we needed to get over our fear of it.

Once we heard that Valerie Plame was a respected CIA analyst it confirmed that the entire agency is worse than useless and undoubted honeycombed with traitors like her.  This agency was utterly unaware than Libya had been subcontracted to run Saddam’s nuclear weapons research.  Kindly Uncle Saddam paid for the entire program and staffed it with Iraqi scientists.  Had Kaddafi not surrendered the whole set up we would have not found out about it until too late.  Had we not invaded kindly Uncle Saddam would have had the bomb.  It was not a question of IF but WHEN.

Yet the Lying Left does not care even though the first victim would have been Israel.