China Isn’t Serious About The Nuclear Threat
Questions over the effectiveness of the Security Council’s punitive sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test grew Sunday, as both South Korea and China — the North’s two most important trading partners — indicated that business and economic relations would be largely unaffected.
A day after the Council unanimously passed the resolution, following nearly a week of intensive diplomatic negotiations, the South Korean government said it would still pursue economic projects with North Korea, including an industrial zone and tourist resort in the North. Those projects are not explicitly covered by the Security Council resolution, but they are an important source of hard currency for the North.
China, which shares a 870-mile porous border with North Korea and is perhaps its most critical economic gateway to the outside world, said Saturday that it had no intention of stopping and inspecting cross-border shipments, as called for, but not specifically required, in the resolution. The Chinese government said nothing on Sunday about how it intended to carry out the sanctions, and American officials said they would be focused on whether the normal trade flow across the border was slowed.
The relative silence on Sunday about how the resolution would be enforced, coupled with the vagaries of the resolution itself, raised concerns that the Security Council action would not have much of an impact for the foreseeable future.
The moral bank of the UN is as broke as Air America; coupled with the complete and utter failure of the UN to take any action against Iran, or to enforce the ceasefire in Lebanon (has Hezbollah been disarmed? Where are the Israeli soldiers?), even the most sycophantic apologist for Kofi Annan and crew can surely see now the total collapse of the world body.
Where are the leaders? Who will, in the manner of Churchill, call out from the wilderness and shout, “Enough?”
If a nuclear terrorist attack occurs, the blood will be spread across many hands, but none will be so soaked as those of the United Nations…
And bankrupt it shall remain until someone (read: the United States) takes the important and serious step of announcing our withdrawl from the no longer (ever?) august body.
As for SoKo, what’s that ditty about trying something again & again in hopes of a new outcome? Roh may be all about Sunshine, but only 11% support it while over 40% support the main opposition. You could say that Roh is being twilighted by reality. And to think Bush had it bad polling in the 40%
China DOES Inspect NK Cargo Despite Words to the Contrary
Despite reports of China balking at inspecting North Korea’s cargo trucks, they seem to be implementing the UN’s resolution. ( Resolution 1718 can be found here. )
While I detested most of the man’s politics, Jesse Helms was right about one thing – the UN is morally bankrupt and a useless institution, and does not deserve our dues or our hosting duties. They’re no better than the League of Nations was in it’s time, and they’ve had many more decades to demonstrate their ineffectiveness. Time to kick them out, closing time is here.