http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15archive/&entry_id=6849<snip>And just what kind of explanation, if any, did Kim's regime offer for its missile-firing tests? After offering up such enticing headlines as "Japan's Savage Plunder of Cultural Properties Assailed" and "Pyongyang Builders Vow to Spruce Up Riversides of Taedong," the state-controlled news service of the misnamed Democratic People's Republic of Korea paraphrased a foreign-ministry spokesman in Pyongyang. The official noted that "in the wake of the missile launches{,}...the U.S. and some other countries following it, including Japan, are...terming {them a} 'violation' and 'provocation' and calling for 'sanctions' and 'their referral to the U.N. Security Council.'"
(Not lost on the North Korean government is the fact that Washington is not calling for India, Pakistan, Israel, France or the U.S. itself to dissolve their own nuclear-arms programs.)The most significant section of the North Korean news report offered Team Bush what could be seen as a disturbing reminder of what some might consider - or not - to have been a past diplomatic mistake.
It stated: "As for the moratorium on long-range missile test-fire which agreed with the U.S. in 1999, it was valid only when the {North Korea} -U.S. dialogue was under way. The Bush administration, however, scrapped all the agreements its preceding administration {had} concluded with {North Korea} and totally scuttled the bilateral dialogue."This tidbit of recent history
has not and is not being widely reported by U.S. mainstream news media.The North Korean news report also referred to
the 2002 DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration, in which the two countries agreed to aim to set up diplomatic relations and in which Japan apologized for its past, colonial occupation of Korea. In the 2002 document, Pyongyang insists, it had expressed its "intention to extend beyond 2003 the moratorium on...missile fire in the spirit of the declaration." The North Korean news report noted: "This step was taken on the premise that Japan moved to normalize its relations with the DPRK and redeem its past. The Japanese authorities, however, have abused the DPRK's good faith. They have not honored their commitment...." (In other words, "Fire away!")