North Korea 'to halt nuclear testing'

[xchrom]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0229/breaking34.html

?ts=1330532367
eader Kim Jong-un in the kitchen of a mess hall during his visit to a unit of the Korean People's Army. Photographs: Tom Farrell and Reuters

North Korea has agreed to a suspension of uranium enrichment and a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests, the United States said today.

The reclusive state has also agreed to allow International Atomic Energy inspectors to verify and monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment and confirm disablement of its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, the US State Department said.

The United States will meet with North Korea to finalise details for a proposed package of 240,000 metric tons of food aid.

The US announcement paves the way for the possible resumption of six-party disarmament negotiations with Pyongyang and follows talks between US and North Korean diplomats in Beijing last week.

[COLGATE4]

1. Would that it were true.

But I have the horrible sensation that, once the food aid has been delivered that the talks will suddenly break off and we'll be back to square one once again. Only time will tell.

[qazplm]

3. I'd do it in chunks

1/4 now...1/4 after you allow inspectors in for a month...1/4 for the following month, and then the last 1/3 for an additional month.

Then maybe you give them a set amount for each nuke they destroy, plus an additional amount for each year they keep inspectors in.

[Bandit]

4. Maybe their new Leader is not bat shit crazy.....

Eventually one would think they would like to join the world..

[sofa king]

7. It could be more true than that.

North Korea was sitting on several kilotons of unexploded ordnance dating from roughly World War II, including millions of artillery shells that were becoming old, unreliable, and potentially dangerous.

Rather than actually building a nuclear weapon in a country without reliable supply of food, power, precision instruments or un-warped rational thought, it would have been a lot easier for the NKs to blow up all that aging ammunition deep underground, have it read on seismometers around the region, and then tell everyone they have nuclear weapons. Their closed society and penchant for secrecy lends itself to that approach perfectly.

From that point on, if everyone buys it, the North Koreans are then negotiating away a capability they never had for pure profit. When the timing is right, they can graciously step away from the nuclear table with an armful of concessions they wouldn't otherwise have extracted, with virtually no actual investment.

Oh, and don't worry, they still have enough artillery shells to drop several kilotons of conventional explosives on Seoul in less than a day, so a nuke is hardly an essential accessory for their war machine. The threat North Korea presents has always been credible, whether or not they ever had The Bomb.

[Hugabear]

8. Would that really work?

Could a country fake a nuclear test by exploding thousands of tons of explosives underground?

[sofa king]

9. I think it could; those who claim to know are less sure.

And those others actually claim to know what they're talking about!

Option number three (a faked test) also seems unlikely. The 2006 test was never proven to be fake, and more largely, there's no reason for Pyonyang to fake a test if it could at least attempt a real nuclear detonation. Nor has any world leader ever publicly called out North Korea for executing a failed or fake test in 2006; such a response probably would have pushed Pyongyang to attempt a second test much more quickly. It's the same reason why the United States and Europe--despite seismic data to the contrary--didn't call India's thermonuclear bluff in 1998; they wanted to reduce tensions, not raise them.

Says these guys:

http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-north-korean-nuclear-test-what-the-seismic-data-says

I, however, vehemently disagree. In fact, the last sentence in that quote above provides the very reason why nobody would call NK's bluff if it was a fake. Claiming the test was a fake would only spur efforts to build a real one.

Saying the original test was "never proven to be fake" is hardly convincing when one considers that the North Koreans have clearly gone out of their way to make sure that can't be proven either way.

A faked test does not necessarily preclude an actual weapon. The design of the first nuclear weapon dropped, the Little Boy, was never tested because the Manhattan project scientists were absolutely certain it would work as it did.

As far as there being "no reason" to fake a test, bullshit! If you have only one bomb, you have every reason in the world to fake a test and keep the bomb. Because you don't have it anymore if you test it!

Imperfect analysis aside, the fact of the matter is that the seismic readings on both tests suggest that the detonations were considerably smaller than the Little Boy detonation on Hiroshima. It takes a lot more technology and effort to make a nuclear weapon smaller than Little Boy was, because it's not a simple matter of crashing two puzzle pieces together inside of an artillery tube. It seems very unlikely to me that the NKs skipped that step.

And then there's the question of the messenger. If it's in the US's interest to pretend the tests were real, then that's a national security issue not bound by the niceties of free press and independent analysis. A lone voice of dissent such as my own would be...will be?... quickly shouted down.

[Selatius]

14. I don't know about that. American aircraft detected radioactive isotopes associated with a nuke test

The CIA detected radioactive fallout from the blast site. Both Bloomberg and the BBC at the time bear that out.

[eridani]

12. Why do I suspect they keep doing this just to keep food aid coming?

Hey! We're going to test a nuke unless you send food.

Food sent. OK, no nuke testing until we run out of food again.

[HopeHoops]

2. Yeah, and I'm going to stop taking shits.

Oh, I gotta nother one to tell ya...

[libtodeath]

5. I hope this all works out and

it always takes a Democratic President to make head way on these issues.
All repukes do is bully and threaten.

[Major Nikon]

13. Raygun actually lengthened the cold war with his hard line rhetoric

Raygun's "evil empire" bullshit rhetoric gave fuel to the hard liners fire in the USSR which extended the cold war. The Soviets were swirling the drain and the US knew this in the early 70's. That's why Carter made no efforts to build up our military. Carter knew this because the CIA told him. However, Bush I planted Neocons in the CIA (called Team B) to come up with an alternate assessment of Soviet intentions and the result was predictably that the Soviets were as strong as ever and planning a first strike strategy. Almost everything Team B came up with was later proved to be false, yet on that false assessment Raygun tripled the federal debt building up our military for no good reason. Hearing Raygun's rhetoric and seeing the buildup of US forces gave the hard liners in the USSR what they needed to keep the failing Soviet system intact for several more years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_b

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. I'm glad to see he's got the hang of Looking At Things

It must be genetic: http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

One more bit of global stability ensured ...

[nanabugg]

10. Well, some more potentially good news for Obama detractors to crap on.

I really hope this is true. And if Iran wanted to screw over the US and Israel at the same time, they would agree to doing the same.

[Major Hogwash]

11. I found this on Page 4.

Evidently it wasn't even deemed newsworthy because it is not in the Latest Breaking News section.

But, thanks for posting it here.
This will solve the Korean crisis that has hounded us for the last 60 years or so.