President Obama has decided to lead the free world in an “everything opposite from G. W. Bush” approach to foreign affairs.  Although in many instances this could be a good idea, like most unprepared, naive President’s of our past, President Obama seems to be throwing out the good with the bad.  This has included numerous public displays of submission, moral infirmity on a global scale including, but not limited to bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia, fecklessness as to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and a world groveling tour where he went from country to country begging forgiveness from dictators and despots.  It has long been the Conservative view that such overt displays of weakness, and complete lack of resolve will not engender peace and cooperation from our enemies, but instead only invite further dangerous behavior.

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N. Korea To Boycott Talks & Restart Nuclear Weapons Plant

TOKYO, April 14 — Fuming at the U.N. Security Council for condemning its recent missile launch, North Korea said Tuesday it will restart its plutonium factory, junk all its disarmament agreements and “never participate” again in six-country nuclear negotiations.

North Korea had warned before launching a long-range missile on April 5 that it would tolerate no U.N. criticism of what it insisted was a peaceful attempt to put a satellite into orbit.

When the 15-member Security Council unanimously condemned that launch on Monday and demanded a halt to all future missile launches, the North’s reaction was swift, vitriolic and surprisingly substantive.

It called the Security Council’s statement a “brigandish,” “wanton” and “unjust” infringement of its sovereignty.  It said that six-party nuclear talks with the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and, even its closest ally, China, had “turned into a platform” for forcing the North to disarm itself and for bringing down its system of government.

“We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement released by its state news agency.

If it follows through on Tuesday’s bluster, North Korea will walk away from six years of slow, fitful but sometimes productive negotiations that have led to substantial disablement of the North’s main nuclear reactor and partial disclosure of the scale of its weapons program.

The talks, in turn, have rewarded the government of Kim Jong Il with food, fuel and removal from a U.S. list of countries that sponsor terror.  The Obama administration has repeatedly said that it wants to resume the talks, which stalled last year in a dispute about how to verify the North’s past nuclear activity.

That nuclear activity, judging from the North’s statement on Tuesday, is soon to increase.

“We will actively consider building our own light-water nuclear reactor, will revive nuclear facilities and reprocess used nuclear fuel rods,” the ministry said. Experts have said the North does not have the equipment or skills to make an advanced light-water reactor.

China, host of the six-party talks, called for restraint and calm on Tuesday, asking all countries to return to the discussions, even after North Korea announced it would never do so.

“We hope the relevant parties could proceed from the perspective of the overall interest of the region, so as to work together to safeguard the progress of the six-party talks,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a news briefing.

Japan also urged North Korea to return to the talks and the Russian government said it regretted Pyongyang’s decision.

Analysts in Seoul said that North Korea, with its threat to pull out of the six-party talks, appeared to be up to its familiar tactics of brinkmanship — creating a crisis in order to be rewarded for helping to solve it.

“North Korea can use today’s walkout as a negotiating chip with the United States in the future,” said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.

North Korea outraged the world three years ago by exploding a small nuclear device. But less than a year later, as it turned brinkmanship into remuneration, it pledged to abandon its nuclear weapons in return for aid from the United States and other countries.

“North Koreans have learned from past experience that when they create worst-case scenarios they get closer to solving their problems,” said Chun Hyun-joon, a North Korea specialist at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
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U.S. May Drop Key Condition For Talks With Iran

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing proposals that would shift strategy toward Iran by dropping a longstanding American insistence that Tehran rapidly shut down nuclear facilities during the early phases of negotiations over its atomic program, according to officials involved in the discussions.

The proposals, exchanged in confidential strategy sessions with European allies, would press Tehran to open up its nuclear program gradually to wide-ranging inspection.  But the proposals would also allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for some period during the talks. That would be a sharp break from the approach taken by the Bush administration, which had demanded that Iran halt its enrichment activities, at least briefly to initiate negotiations.

The proposals under consideration would go somewhat beyond President Obama’s promise, during the presidential campaign, to open negotiations with Iran “without preconditions.” Officials involved in the discussion said they were being fashioned to draw Iran into nuclear talks that it had so far shunned.

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Peace in our time!