Drug Dealers From Pyongyang

Has the West already started a campaign for ultimate discrediting of the North Korean regime?
North Korea together with Iraq are still the places from where important information comes. Today Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov met with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. The parties discussed methods of overcoming the crisis situation. It is hard to say now whether the negotiations will prove effective. The crisis still continues. To all appearances, the West has found one more reason to avoid establishment of a dialogue with North Korea.

The British and American press have touched upon a very pressing problem (which also has all chances of further development): it is said that North Korea produces fake money and tons of drugs. It is declared at that, these are the sources that maintain Kim Jong-il’s regime afloat.

American officials already doubt that North Korea needs American help at all. As US News and World Report informs, the US authorities calculated that North Korea produces 40 tons of opium annually, large amount of amphetamines and millions of fake dollars (as Guardian reports, the sum reaches 500 million dollars).

In fact, the information saying that North Korea produced fake dollars and drugs was published several months ago for the first time. Germany’s Deutsche Welle radio reported about it in 1999 already, but at that very period the information disturbed nobody in the West. The situation is quite different now: Pyongyang’s statements make an ass of Washington, and it is clear that the latter must crack down on Kim Jong-il, but nobody knows how it can be done.

It seems that the North Korean crisis is proceeding into its sluggish stage. Washington cannot make concessions: if it agrees to render economic aid, this would mean acknowledgement of its defeat for the present-day American administration. Which is very much impossible for the White House, by the way. But at the same time, it is highly unlikely that North Korea will give up its tactics, in any case, it won’t until economic aid comes to the country. The incumbent situation of North Korea is actually desperate, and nuclear blackmail is the only effective method to draw attention to its problems. It is certainly a dangerous method that by the way can entail consequences very dangerous for the region.

Meanwhile, the North Korean crisis has become another obvious evidence proving that the US administration cannot (or doesn’t wish) settle difficult problems in a diplomatic manner. It is always ready to deliver missile blows at problem places, but reluctant to seek new ways of solving the problems. It is easier to accuse the adverse party of making fake money and producing drugs. Meanwhile, the regime in Afghanistan is amicable toward the USA, but amount of drugs produced there is much bigger than in North Korea. It is quite natural that Washington prefers not to mention this fact often.

Vasily Bubnov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: https://www.pravda.ru/world/34790-kim/

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