North Korea Still Balking Over Nuke Shutdown

Pyongyang keeps sending us the same message

(NEWSER) - Time after time, North Korea has relayed the same message: if the US will hold direct talks with Pyongyang, North Korea is “ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty,” writes Jimmy Carter in the Washington Post . It’s time to consider taking them up on their request. More»

(NEWSER) - The tentative thaw continues in North Korea relations. On the heels of Bill Clinton's trip, Bill Richardson hosted two high-ranking officials from the North today at the governor's mansion in New Mexico and declared that Pyongyang is sending a "positive vibration" about detente. “What I sense was, one, the temperature has really cooled down in the relationship,” Richardson told MSNBC. “I think the Clinton visit has helped a lot.” More»

Pyongyang claims to have plutonium for 4 nuclear bombs

(NEWSER) - North Korea threatened to “shatter” South Korea today as reports surfaced that Pyongyang may have enough plutonium stocks to produce at least four nuclear bombs, the Guardian reports. The North said rising hostilities with Seoul compelled it to take “an all-out confrontational posture” over a disputed maritime border that triggered clashes in 1999 and 2000. More»

Calls South Korean government 'traitors'

(NEWSER) - North Korea is threatening to sever ties with South Korea in a war of words that has plunged relations between the partitioned neighbors to a new low, Reuters reports. North Korean officials are upset about hardline policies of South Korea's conservative government. "If the traitors keep to the road of reckless confrontation with North Korea, defaming its dignity," officials will consider a "total freeze of relations," declared the state's Communist newspaper. More»

Strategy to restart nuclear diplomacy

(NEWSER) - The US is expected to provisionally remove North Korea from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, possibly as early as today, reports the Washington Post. It may be the Bush administration's last "carrot" to offer as diplomatic efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program falter. Tensions between the nations mounted yesterday as North Korea barred inspectors from its nuclear facilities. More»