BEIJING - Less than two months after North Korea blew up the cooling tower of its main nuclear plant in a televised spectacle, the government yesterday announced it had suspended the dismantling of its nuclear program.
North Korea's Foreign Ministry said it was responding to US delays in removing it from a list of "terror-sponsoring" states. The ministry said the suspension began Aug. 14. North Korea said in a statement distributed over its official news agency that the United States' insistence on verification infringed on its sovereignty and was a "brigandish demand of unilaterally disarming."
"The US is gravely mistaken if it thinks it can make a house search in the DPRK [North Korea] as it pleases just as it did in Iraq," the statement said. This latest development is a blow to the Bush administration's hopes of claiming for the president's legacy the removal of the North Korean nuclear threat. But longtime North Korea watchers expressed no surprise by the suspension.
"Nobody thought this was going to be easy," said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea analyst with the International Crisis Group in Seoul. "What is going on here is one of two possibilities: Either they have not been bargaining in good faith and have no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons, or they are just trying to negotiate the best bargain they can."
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Or maybe the U.S. is not bargaining in good faith, huh?
