Monday - February 25, 2008

Don’t bet on it

CNN Editor’s note: CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour recently toured North Korea’s nuclear plant. CNN was one of only two U.S. news organizations at the facility.

YONGBYON, North Korea (CNN)—The North Koreans haven’t seen this many Americans since the Korean War, but they are pulling out all the stops.

CNN was one of only two American news organizations ever allowed to visit the main nuclear facility at Yongbyon.

For a nation President Bush labeled as part of the “axis of evil,” it was not an impressive sight: a dilapidated concrete hulk, built with few resources back in the early ‘80s.

But it did produce plutonium, enough to make a few bombs and to test-fire a nuclear weapon 18 months ago.

Today is a very different story though. North Korea shut down Yongbyon last summer under an agreement with the United States and four other nations in the nuclear disarmament negotiations. We were shown the extraordinary sight of heavy metal pipes, chopped down and laid on the ground: They had been part of a coolant loop that sent steam to the turbine generators to produce electricity.  We saw the distinctive bell-shaped cooling tower, just a shell, the inner guts of the system cut out. We saw the vital nuclear fuel rods being removed and neutralized under 20 feet of water.  And we even were shown the reprocessing plant where plutonium was extracted from the rods, plutonium that was used for nuclear weapons, the chief engineer admitted. Parts of the plant are now dismantled, wrapped in plastic and put into storage.

And there are American technicians from the Department of Energy on-site helping with all of this. It seems a far cry from the hostility conjured by the axis of evil.

For all of this, North Korea expected a million tons of heavy fuel oil, a lifting of sanctions and removal from the U.S. list of terrorist sponsors. This has not happened yet, so North Korea has slowed down the disabling process at Yongbyon.

CNN, the most gullible name in news. When it suits our purposes of course.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/25/2008 at 12:29 PM   
Filed Under: • Commies • North-Korea • Terrorists •  
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