Kim Jong-il's Manual - 9 January, 2003

“How to enrage the USA with impunity?”

The North Korean nuclear program is still a headache for the world community. The appeals to stop the works at a nuclear power station in Yonben are ignored by Pyongyang. To all appearances, the North Korean leadership isn’t going to give up the effective policy of threats and blackmailing. This obstinacy can be explained: Pyongyang hopes that its consent to give up the nuclear program will be generously paid for. However, Washington (the main addressee of the bellicose declarations pronounced by the North Korean leadership) is reluctant to make concessions so far. At the same time, the White House is ready to start negotiations with Pyongyang without any provisional terms. This is mentioned in a joint statement of American, South Korean and Japanese diplomats on the North Korean crisis circulated today. What is more, the US Administration insisted that it must be specially emphasized in the statement that the USA wasn’t going to settle the problem with a war. However, America isn’t going to pay North Korea for fulfillment of its commitments either.

This peaceable disposition of the USA is explained by its inability to wage two wars at once (although the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thinks differently). Especially that a war campaign against North Korea may entail unexpected consequences. These consequences may be negative not only for North Korea and the USA, but also for South Korea, Japan, Russia and China. The leaders of these countries will hardly be indifferent if the USA chooses to settle the North Korean crisis by force.

On the whole, Washington is in a rather stupid situation while it concentrates all efforts on finding proofs of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. It will take actually much effort to find this weapon. At the same time, Pyongyang openly declares that it can easily produce such a nuclear bomb. And it is not ashamed to defame the policy of the US Administration. What does North Korea get in response? Only appeals and statements. If Saddam Hussein only venture to behave the way Kim Jong-il does! If he did, a war would be immediately started in Iraq.

To all appearances, if Washington is interested in stabilization of relations with North Korea, the White House will have to offer something substantial to Kim Jong-il instead, probably financial air or provisions supplies. And for the time being, North Korea is still blaming the USA “for intensification of the threat of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.”

Vasily Bubnov
PRAVDA.Ru