Politically, the results of the test may revive last week’s finger-pointing about who is more responsible for the Korean test: Bill Clinton or President Bush.
As president, Mr. Clinton negotiated a deal that froze the production and weaponization of North Korea’s plutonium, but intelligence agencies later determined that North Korea began its secret uranium program under his watch.
The plutonium that North Korea exploded was produced, according to intelligence estimates, either during the administration of the first President Bush or after 2003, when the North Koreans threw out international inspectors and began reprocessing spent nuclear fuel the inspectors had kept under seal.
Unlike the Clinton administration in 1994, the current Bush administration chose not to threaten to destroy North Korea’s fuel and nuclear reprocessing facilities if they tried to make weapons.
That threat in 1994 — which was ultimately resolved with an agreement to freeze the weapons program — was made by William J. Perry, who was the defense secretary then. In an interview on Monday, Mr. Perry said: “There was a brief window to catch this plutonium before it was made into bomb fuel. It’s gone.
It’s out of the barn now.”
article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/world/asia/17diplo.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1161057600&en=5178189fc23c852c&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=sloginhttp://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree
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