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| Axis of Evil |
| N Korea threatens to ’destroy world’ |
| 2002-12-23 |
| Desperate efforts began yesterday to head off the growing Korean crisis as Pyongyang and Washington continued to talk up the tension. The UN has confirmed that North Korea has carried out its threat to remove UN seals and dismantle monitoring cameras at a laboratory used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Senator Joseph Biden, the outgoing chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, warned that North Korea's plan to restart a programme for plutonium extraction could allow it to produce bombs "within months". A spokesman for the Vienna - based International Atomic Energy Agency said: "There isn't any legitimate purpose for the facility other than separating plutonium from spent fuel." Pyongyang has issued a series of threats, including one to "destroy the earth" if the US resorted to nuclear war against it. South Korea's president, Kim Dae-jung, and the president-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, sought to calm the mood by saying they wanted a peaceful resolution. While Russia expressed concern at the North's weekend announcement, the deputy foreign minister warned the US not to aggravate the crisis. But the US state department yesterday rejected Pyongyang's insistence that the crisis can be solved if the US signs a treaty of non-aggression. "We will not bargain or offer inducements for North Korea to live up to the treaties and agreements it has signed," a spokesman said. US intelligence sources were quoted by the BBC as saying they believe "North Korea may already have a small number of nuclear bombs and the material to make a few more". Mr Biden said the crisis was "a greater danger immediately to US interests ... than Saddam Hussein." Yesterday, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, dismissed such concerns. "We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts," he said. "We're capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it." He said Washington chose to pursue a diplomatic strategy against North Korea for the moment, as that crisis was still at a relatively early stage. The North Korean media, which is never short of a fiery turn of phrase, has given Bush administration hardliners all the material they may want. The communist party's newspaper Workers' Daily declared that "the army and people of the DPRK are fully ready to mercilessly strike the bulwark of US imperialist aggressors" - implying that they could hit targets in the US. "There can be no earth without Korea," it said. "The army and people of the DPRK will destroy the earth if the enemies dare make a nuclear strike at it. This is their do-or-die spirit." Great Googly Moogly!, what kind of poker are these guys playing? |
| Posted by:Frank Martin |
| #7 Sort of like "they acknowledge me therefore I exist" |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-12-24 16:03:57 |
| #6 What we have here is a madman who is falling apart and being ignored. North Korea keeps making scarier and scarier statements hoping somebody will notice them and thus validate them. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2002-12-24 09:38:16 |
| #5 These guys are nutty enough to nuke Seoul or Tokyo, just for the hell of it. In fact, I'm afraid that China will order them to do something like that in case the US attacks Iraq. The entire Axis of Evil is a Chinese strategy to distract and ultimately exhaust the US with a series of regional wars. |
| Posted by: Peter 2002-12-24 07:02:04 |
| #4 Do you ever get the impression we're living through a very bad 1930s adventure novel? We've had Binny reprising The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu, the Learned Elders of Islam doing the Council of Boskone, or maybe SPECTRE. We've got Sammy wanting to be Il Duce. And now we have the Mad Scientist(s), who have FOUND THE ZECRET FORMULA TO BLOW UP ZA WOOOORLD! I hope to hell Jack Armstrong, the Lensmen, the Junior G-Men, and Bond, James Bond, are all out there on the case. Otherwise, we're all in large trouble! |
| Posted by: Fred 2002-12-23 23:32:52 |
| #3 They're will be massive, MASSIVE Chinglish incoherence in KCNA this week. And Biden's right.These people are the Looney Tunes of the planet,which is impressive considering all the potential contestants in that game show. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2002-12-23 22:46:50 |
| #2 Say Fred, does that cell phone trick work on Nuclear Reactors as well. |
| Posted by: Speed Bump 2002-12-23 22:37:07 |
| #1 Fred was expecting "paroxisms of incoherence". Right on schedule. |
| Posted by: Pink & Fluffy 2002-12-23 22:36:07 |