To be sure: I don't feel comfortable with these guys messing around with nukes, albeit in the underground of their own country.
But then again, I don't feel any more comfortable with the American or Russian nuclear arsenal, when there is evidence popping up that for instance the Kursk, the Russian submarine that sank on August 12, 2000, may have been grounded by a U.S. launched missile.
I don't feel comfortable when the U.S., in a way that is more becoming rule than exception, is disregarding the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and cooperates with India on it's nuclear development (for civil reasons, of course) while leaving Pakistan in the cold.
I didn't feel comfortable back in 1995 when Mr. Chirac slapped the world in the face by resuming nuclear tests in the Mururoa atol, when 10 years before that the French had already sunk Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior for trying to intervene in similar tests.
I just don't feel comfortable with any nukes, whether they are held by George, Jacques or Kim.
In the Korean debate, I however missed anyone making reference to a pretty good article in Newsweek by Selig S. Harrison. His opening statement read like this:
On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations." Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence. Whatever the truth, I found on a recent trip to Pyongyang that North Korean leaders view the financial sanctions as the cutting edge of a calculated effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord, squeeze the Kim Jong Il regime and eventually force its collapse.
(emphasis is mine. Notice again the "weapons of mass destruction'-thing ?)
So is that the way we do business nowadays ? Signing treaties and then shoot the cosignataries in the back ? I don't care whether North Korea were communist, Hinduist, polygamist or ... my God, catholics ... they deserved a chance to show that they were willing to make efforts in a process that could lead, if not to worldwide loving embrace, at least to peaceful co-existence with it's neighbours. Israël is given a new chance every time they have trampled on the Palestinians, so why not North-Korea, a "country on the verge of collapse" ?
Do I have any reason to distrust Mr. Harrison ? I wouldn't see why, with his credentials.
I am getting sick of all the distorted thruths we are confronted with every single day, from all sides.
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