The Other Sandal Drops

Hot off the wires:

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Friday that establishing a peace agreement on the divided Korean Peninsula to replace the 1953 cease-fire that ended the Korean War would be a way to resolve its nuclear standoff with the United States and the international community. A peace pact would "lead to putting an end to the U.S. hostile policy toward (North Korea), which spawned the nuclear issue," a spokesman from the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. That would "automatically result in the denuclearization of the peninsula." The unnamed spokesman, quoted by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, said such a move would "give a strong impetus" to international nuclear disarmament talks set to resume Tuesday in Beijing.

What this means is that if these six-party talks actually begin on Tuesday, they will go absolutely nowhere. North Korea knows that the United States will never enter into a two-party peace treaty. The Korean War involved UN troops from all over the world. The Japanese plan to muddy the nuclear talks by demanding that Pyongyang inform them of the fate of eight people who were kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 70s to train their spies. And the United States plans to press North Korea on human right abuses. None of these issues have anything to do with North Korea's phantom nuclear weapons. I think the only reason the North agreed to resume talks is so their diplomats could scarf down a few good meals.