re: #358 prairiefire

Holy hell, this is good news:[Link: www.reuters.com…]

Sort of but N Korea has been playing games with UN inspectors long before the Iranians started. They get some concessions for offering things that they have no plans to deliver on. Buried further down in your article….

“This puts an element of control back on the North Koreans’ nuclear development program as well as their existing capabilities that we have not had for almost four years,” said Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. negotiator with North Korea who heads the Korea Economic Institute.

But Pritchard said he believed it was unlikely that Pyongyang’s young and untested new leader Kim Jong-un was ready to comply with demands that he scrap the entire nuclear program.

“How does a 28-year-old give up the only legitimate piece of leverage that he has in dealing with the superpowers to preserve the survivability of his regime? He’s not going to do that,” Pritchard said.

They’ve been doing this for a long time…

North Korea agreed to curtail its nuclear activities under a an aid-for-denuclearization agreement reached in September 2005 by six-party talks bringing together North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Under the agreement, the North agreed to abandon its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives to be provided by the other parties involved in the negotiations.

But the embryonic deal was never fully implemented.

Instead, the North held two nuclear test blasts — in 2006 and 2009 — and later disclosed a uranium enrichment program, giving it a second path to obtaining fissile material for bombs, in addition to its long-standing program of producing plutonium. Free carrots and no risk of the stick. It’s an easy game.