North Korea has test fired a seventh missile and the Security Council is now getting ready for an emergency session regarding the tensions:
The UN Security Council will hold an emergency session Wednesday morning to discuss at Japan’s request North Korea’s missile tests, officials said.
Outraged over the pre-dawn test-firing of six missiles by its isolated, communist neighbor, Japan has urged the UN Security Council to take up the matter and has also warned that it might impose economic sanctions of its own.
The Security Council is expected to meet at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) to take up the matter, according to a spokesman for the French mission to the United Nations.
Japan is expected to present a resolution protesting North Korea’s missile tests, according to another UN diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity.
What exactly happens in the Security Council today is dependent upon China. If China feels embarassed about North Korea’s actions then a threat of sanctions could come out of it, however if they don’t then we might be limited to a somewhat mild statement of disagreement.
I believe that Kim Jong-Il is capable of about anything. He is isolated in North Korea and has the military and technology to be a real problem. One of the big questions though is how he got this technology. McJoan from Daily Kos has been kind enough to do some digging and answers that question for us, with this article from the New Yorker:
Last June [2002], four months before the current crisis over North Korea became public, the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a comprehensive analysis of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to President Bush and his top advisers. The document, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, was classified as Top Secret S.C.I. (for “sensitive compartmented information”), and its distribution within the government was tightly restricted. The C.I.A. report made the case that North Korea had been violating international law–and agreements with South Korea and the United States–by secretly obtaining the means to produce weapons-grade uranium.
The document’s most politically sensitive information, however, was about Pakistan. Since 1997, the C.I.A. said, Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead-design information, and weapons-testing data with the Pyongyang regime. Pakistan, one of the Bush Administration’s important allies in the war against terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb.
She also adds this important key to the puzzle here:
The Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q Khan was the point man on North Korea’s acquisition of nukes. To this day, the United States has not been allowed to interview A.Q. Khan. Interesting how Bush does not want to put Khan in Gitmo, even though he has been the biggest proliferator of nuclear weapon technology to rogue states like Libya, Iran and North Korea. And this administration made Iraq the focus of their war on terror.
When I read this that little light came on inside. This past week we heard about a new deal between the United States and Pakistan:
New F-16 warplanes being sold to Pakistan will come with an assortment of air and ground weaponry.
The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress last week that the F-16s would come with 200 Sidewinder and 500 AIM-120C5 air-to-air missiles plus 800 2,000 and 500-pound general purpose bombs.
The weapons, along with launchers, training missiles and 500 JDAM bomb guidance systems, are attacked to Pakistan’s request for F-16C/D jets from the Block 50/52 production run.
The agency said the contract could be worth about $650 million to suppliers including Lockheed, BAE and Northrop Grumman.
Pakistani warplanes have played a steady role in operations against al-Qaida forces operating out of the rugged countryside. The Pentagon said in a statement that the munitions would be used in continuing anti-terrorism operations.
So we are selling weapons and fighter jets to a country that is selling technology to North Korea, all because they are helping us in the “war on terror”. How is this helping when North Korea is part of the “axis of evil” according to Bush? Failed foreign policy? That is an understatement – it is more like a disastrous foreign policy.
What is even more insulting is the fact that we learned yesterday that Bush closed down the CIA unit in charge of tracking Osama over a year ago. We aren’t even that worried about Osama anymore and yet we are selling our technology to the very country that helps out North Korea! This makes absolutely no sense at all. As matter of fact it is starting to get that feel of Iran-Contra all over again.