Nuclear freelancing with Kim Jong-il

The North Korean regime is encouraging some Jimmy Carter-style freelancers to get involved in nuclear weapons negotiations with the US – this at a time when the Bush Administration is turning the screws on Pyongyang.

The strange part is, Why isn’t the State Department preventing such self-appointed emissaries from traveling to the isolated country in the first place, as it has the right to do?

Former State Department figure Jack Pritchard’s recent trip to Pyongyang is a dangerous move. It is inconsistent with the very nature of American democracy which requires that diplomacy not be practiced by individuals other than those charged with such responsibilities under the Constitution – and accountable to it.

Pritchard’s Kim Jong-il-approved junket produced a North Korean negotiating position that the Wall Street Journal says "boils down to this: Trust us that this time we really will abandon our nuclear programs, and we will agree to let you pay us even more money."

According to the Journal, "he deal they are offering now is essentially the same one they offered us back in 1994, the last time they manufactured a nuclear crisis. Come to think of it, it was a similar private initiative back then, by former President Jimmy Carter, that helped force a deal at a moment when Bill Clinton was taking a harder line. We all know how that Agreed Framework turned out."

Pritchard retired from the State Department nine months ago. "The really interesting question is why someone so at odds with official Bush policy was kept on so long," writes the Journal, "but then again much of the State Department often seems to be a Dean Administration in waiting."