Surely, North Korea got the memo. Days after the Bush administration announced it would be implementing a new foreign policy measure that would tie U.S. foreign aid to the conduct of recipient nations, the often-times belligerent nation offered today to stop its production of nuclear weapons.
North Korea has said before it is willing to freeze its “nuclear activities” in exchange for U.S. aid and being delisted from Washington’s roster of terrorism sponsoring nations.
But we should accept the concession on only one condition: unfettered and regular American inspections of their nuclear facilities. They fooled us once before, as aid that hinged on their pledge to refuse to go ahead with a nuclear program hardly achieved its purpose, and the U.S. awoke after a somber sleep faced with a nuclear North Korea.
In making sure of North Korea’s cooperation in the matter through ultimate oversight, hopefully bordering on the highly intrusive, an end to the nation’s nuke building will go a long way toward securing peace in the region and throughout the world.
If only we could now start to work on the elimination of North Korean nukes.