>From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Korean summit undercuts 'Star Wars'
>
>By Tim Wheeler - People's Weekly World
>
>The June 12 meeting of the two Korean presidents in Pyongyang, capital of the
>Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), was greeted by peace
>organizations as a step toward ending the 50-year confrontation on the
>peninsula.
>
>The meeting also countered Clinton administration claims that the U.S. needs
>an anti-missile system to defend against the DPRK, which it brands a "rogue
>nation."
>
>DPRK President Kim Il shook hands with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung
>during a welcoming ceremony at the Pyongyang airport June 12.
>
>Kim Jong Il has unleashed a diplomatic offensive to strengthen the DPRK's
>relations with countries around the world. He recently visited Beijing.
>Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit Pyongyang this month,
>rebuffing Clinton Administration attempts to deploy a ballistic missile
>defense (BMD) in violation of the 1972 ABM Treaty.
>
>Joe Volk, executive director of the American Friends Service Committee, said,
>"This meeting is a very good initiative. What we need on the Korean peninsula
>is an end to the Cold War through threat reduction, confidence building and
>identifying areas of cooperation between the north and the south. It might
>lead to mutual security and in the not too distant future reunification of
>Korea"
>
>He added, "We doubt very much if North Korea poses a real threat to U.S.
>security that justifies spending billions of dollars for an anti-missile
>system."
>
>Kim Dae Jung served prison terms under successive right-wing regimes in Seoul.
>A worldwide movement, joined by the DPRK, forced the regime to free him.
>
>South Korean trade with the DPRK, which was zero in 1989 reached $333 million
>in 1999. As of April 7, some 210,000 people from South Korea had visited Mount
>Kumgang (Diamond Mountain) in the DPRK, among the most beautiful peaks in the
>world and revered as a symbol of Korean unification.
>
>The summit of the "two Kims" comes during a period of agonizing reappraisal of
>the role of the U.S. in the Korean War. The Pentagon is attempting to
>discredit an Associated Press report buttressed by eyewitnesses that U.S.
>soldiers massacred unarmed Koreans whom they had herded under the No Gun Ri
>bridge. The DPRK's Korean Central News Agency released a report on the history
>of the Korean War reminding readers that the Pentagon, and Gen. Douglas
>MacArthur, had schemed to escalate the Korean War into World War III by
>crossing the Yalu River.
>
>The plan was to draw People's China and the Soviet Union into the war and then
>retaliate with nuclear weapons. I.F. Stone provides massive documentation of
>this plan in his "Hidden History of the Korean War." Half a century later, the
>U.S. still deploys 40,000 troops and hundreds of nuclear weapons in South
>Korea.
>
>Mary Day Kent, executive director of the U.S. Section of the Women's
>International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told the World that her
>group favors negotiations to end the Korean War, "which has been going on for
>decades."
>
>The South Korean section of WILPF "is very concerned about human rights issues
>in South Korea and also about the process of renegotiation of the 'Status of
>Forces Agreement.' This is an indication that the U.S. plans to maintain its
>military forces in Korea into the future", she said. We are extremely
>concerned and opposed to the revival of an anti-ballistic missile proposal,
>which is both destabilizing and ineffective."
>
>Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Nuclear Weapons and
>Power in Space, told the World, "There is a fresh breeze blowing. It runs
>counter to the claim that North Korea is ready to launch a nuclear attack
>against the rest of the world."
>
>He accused the CIA of attempting to whip up hysteria against North Korea.
>"They have revised their estimates on how long it would take the North Koreans
>to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile to justify immediate
>deployment of Star Wars. This has been a fabrication from the start."
>
>President Clinton is under mounting pressure to reject the new version of Star
>Wars. On June 12, 33 eminent scholars of U.S.-Russian relations sent a letter
>to Clinton initiated by the Council for a Livable World.
>
>"We believe the current plans for the National Missile Defense program may
>undermine U.S. security and further aggravate U.S. relations with Russia," the
>letter warned. "We urge you not to endorse deployment at this time."
>
>Signers include Timothy Colton and Marshall Goldman, leading Russia scholars
>at Harvard; Arthur Hartman, former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and John
>Steinbruner, an arms control expert.
>
>Meanwhile, 46 physicists and engineers, organized by the Union of Concerned
>Scientists, told Congress that the Star Wars scheme should be shelved.
>
>"What's on the books at this point is simply not adequate and never will be,"
>said Lawrence Jones, a physicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
>
>The scientists charged that the Pentagon has deliberately "simplified" tests
>in hopes of proving that the anti-missile missile can pick out the real
>incoming missile from thousands of tin-foil decoys. Not one test has
>succeeded.
>
>
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