Kathreb

Tick Tock

The 60 day deadline in the agreement for North Korea's nuclear disarmament is rapidly approaching. It is tense times to see if it can be met. The main stumbling bloc has been the frozen fund in Macau but that seems to have become un-frozen. But will North Korea act promptly to close its main nuclear reactor by Saturday? I, for one, am agog with anticipation to see what will happen. At a guess I think North Korea will do some kind of 'closing' of a nuclear site that probably won't satisfy the US but will be enough to get past the deadline into stage II.

Japan is far less optimistic and

has extended its sanctions against North Korea for six months, amid growing doubts that Pyongyang will close its key nuclear reactor by this Saturday's deadline.

(that is quoted from the Sydney Morning Herald, April 11, 2007. For some reason it won't link). Although it seems Japan's pessimism is based more on lack of progress on the Japan abductees issue rather than evidence that North Korea is about to re-neg on its side of the bargain.

Ireland
I just got back from a short trip to Ireland. That was my second visit to that most beautiful country. We attended a conference in Dublin over the weekend before joining a 3-day tour around the southern half of the island. My camera decided to have hissy fit during the trip so I got no photos but my sister had her camera so there may be some photos later on. Highlights were the cliffs of Moher, and drinking guinness. The tour group we went with was predominantly young so each night we got dropped off at a pub and told the directions to local clubs to dance the nights away, which we did.

Nicholas Eberstadt's new-ish book
I notice that Nicholas Eberstadt is having a book forum for his new book: The North Korean Economy: between crisis and catastrophe. I regret to inform Mr Eberstadt that my free signed copy seems to have been lost in the mail so I can't make any comments on the book or indeed post it on the very popular 'currently reading' portion of my blog site.

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