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John Bolton Slams North Korea Nuclear Deal
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton slams the new deal on North Korea’s nuclear program, saying it grants too many concessions and sends a "bad signal” to Iran. "It is rewarding bad behavior of the North Koreans by promising fuel oil," said Bolton. "It's a bad signal to North Korea and it's a bad signal to Iran. It will say to countries like Iran and other would-be proliferators, if you just have enough patience, if you just have enough persistence, you’ll wear the United States down. They’ll give up on point after point after point.”
Under the announced terms of the accord reached in Beijing, North Korea will receive some $400 million in aid, including 1 million tons of fuel oil. An immediate shipment of 50,000 tons of fuel oil will be delivered in the next two months. If North Korea then agrees to shut down its nuclear facility at Yongbyon, an additional 950,000 tons of fuel will be provided, the Washington Times reports.
As part of the deal, the U.S. agreed to Pyongyang's demand to lift Treasury Department banking restrictions on Banco Delta Asia in Macao, which was laundering North Korean counterfeit $100 bills to finance the communist regime. Giving up financial leverage on North Korea by agreeing to lift banking sanctions is a "huge" mistake, Bolton said. "That leverage is what brought them to the table . . . The Chinese were paying them to come to the talks. Now we're paying them."
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Critics of the deal – hammered out by the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China – say it is similar to the 1994 pact that called for North Korea to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for aid. North Korea violated that agreement and set off its first underground nuclear blast last October.
"The danger of this kind of agreement is that it's a charade, it's a hollow agreement," Bolton told the Times about the new deal. "And it will give people the illusion of security when it won't actually produce it.” During an appearance on the Fox News Channel, Bolton declared: "The president used to articulate the principle that you don’t reward bad behavior. North Korea is engaged in a kind of blackmail . . .We have crossed an important line, and the only issue is what the price is going to be." Bolton is concerned that the United States is playing by a of set of rules that North Korea has no intention to honor. "I’m gravely worried that we’ve given up the leverage we had to end their nuclear weapons program.”
Henry Sokolski, who was a defense official in former President George Bush's administration, agreed that the deal will likely undermine efforts to convince Iran to limit its nuclear program.
"It is going to be harder to get everybody to be tough on Iran to the extent that we push this diplomatic effort on North Korea," Sokolski told the Times. "As for disarming the North Koreans, you'd be crazy not to be a skeptic."
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
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