It hasn’t been a good week for Undersecretary of State Bolton. Some of the eggs he’s laid in the past year or so hatched as turkeys and have come home to roost.
Back in October of 2002, one of Bolton’s munchkins claimed he had accosted a Democratic People’s Republic of Korea “diplomat” at a cocktail party, had accused the DPRK of having a clandestine uranium-enrichment program, and the Korean had admitted the accusation was true.
The next day – and practically every day since – the DPRK has officially and emphatically denied that it has any such program.
Now, if DPRK has such a program, no one – not even the CIA – has the foggiest notion where it might be sited.
Nevertheless, within weeks we cut off the quarterly supply of fuel oil guaranteed DPRK in return for a “freeze” of its nuclear power reactors and associated facilities, kept since 1994 under lock and seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In so doing, we effectively abrogated the U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework, negotiated for President Clinton by Ambassador Gallucci, that was supposed to keep the DPRK a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The DPRK continued to deny that it had a uranium-enrichment program, and announced that if the Agreed Framework oil shipments weren’t resumed it would withdraw from the NPT after all.
They weren’t resumed, so in December the DPRK announced it was withdrawing, kicked out the IAEA inspectors, ripped off the IAEA seals, restarted its plutonium-producing reactor, and in February, began recovering weapons-grade plutonium from its “unfrozen” spent fuel.
About the same time, Bolton met with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv. According to the Israeli independent newspaper, Ha’aretz, Bolton told the Israelis he had “no doubt” that “America will attack Iraq,” and soon, to disarm Saddam Hussein. The Israelis said “okay,” but said they were much more worried about Iran having nukes, than Iraq. Bolton told them that Iraq had to come first, so “it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea, afterwards.”
Well, you know how the invasion of Iraq turned out.
Disaster!
There were no Iraqi nukes. There weren’t even any chemical or biological weapons. Worse, the insurrection, coupled with the paucity of “willing” partners, means that we don’t have the necessary means for dealing from a position of strength with what the neocrazies perceive to be the nuke threats from Syria, Iran and the DPRK for a long time.
Worse, still, the neo-crazies had deliberately gut-shot the IAEA because it stood in the way of justifying the invasion to Joe Sixpack. The IAEA had re-certified on the eve of the invasion that there were no nuke programs in Iraq. Hence the IAEA Board of Governors was hardly in the mood to “deal with the threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea” for Bolton and the Israelis.
So, last week Bolton attempted to get the heads of state of the eight ‘industrialized’ nations – the G8 – to end-run the IAEA Board of Governors. The G8 issued an Action Plan on Non-Proliferation – which has all the import of a pledge by the G8 heads to give up smoking. But it got the Iranian mullahs attention. And DPRK’s Kim Jong-il.
Here is what the G8 said – in part – about DPRK:
“The DPRK’s (a) announced withdrawal from the NPT – which is unprecedented – its (b) continued pursuit of nuclear weapons – including through both its plutonium reprocessing and its uranium enrichment programs – in violation of its international obligations; and its (c) established history of missile proliferation, are serious concerns to us all.”
And here’s what the G8 said – in part – about Iran:
“Iran must be in full compliance with its NPT obligations and safeguards agreement.
“We deplore Iran’s delays, deficiencies in cooperation, and inadequate disclosures, as detailed in IAEA Director General reports.
“We therefore urge Iran promptly and fully to comply with its commitments and all IAEA Board requirements, including ratification and full implementation of the Additional Protocol, leading to resolution of all outstanding issues related to its nuclear program.”
So, this week, the DPRK delegate to the 6-Party talks reportedly told a Bolton munchkin that because of what Bolton had the G8 do, they might just test a nuke or two.
And the Iranian mullahs informed France-Germany-UK – all G8 members – that they were resuming gas-centrifuge construction because France-Germany-UK had reneged on their promise to deal with IAEA issues within the IAEA.
All in all, not a good week for Bolton.
