Verfication Plan for North Korea

The _WP_ has a “copy”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/kesslerdoc_092608.pdf?sid=ST2008092600020&s_pos=list of the U.S.-proposed scheme for verifying the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. You may have “heard”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2008/prn200813.html that the North Koreans were a little unhappy with it.

Appropriately describing the plan as “far-reaching,” the accompanying “article”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092504380.html notes that

bq. U.S. verification experts were not even closely consulted when the six nations involved in the talks concluded a vague agreement on how verification might proceed. But they were given the lead role in drafting the U.S. document presented to North Korea in July.

About 5 years ago, if memory serves, I saw some of State’s VCI people talk about a verification scheme for North Korea. It was apparent then that they were for _extensive_ verification. So the character of this proposal is, to me, unsurprising.

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