by CKR
The New York Times today says that the Bush administration is asking President Hu Jintao of China for some help.
According to Asian officials, the Chinese promised to send a delegation to Pyongyang later this month, but also advised Mr. Bush against making public pronouncements about the North Korean situation, the way he regularly talked about the threat posed by Iraq in the year leading up to the March 2003 invasion.
Mm-hm. Like David Kay suggested the other day. Presumably the US State Department could also have suggested that diplomacy is best done quietly. An entire strategy is laid out in the Times article, so some of this advice might have gone to the leaker too. Or perhaps, if there is no concern expressed by the administration about leaks, we may surmise that this was an authorized leak.
The central piece of evidence...was a scientific analysis of the uranium found in Libya, which has now been identified with near certainty as having been produced in North Korea, intelligence officials say. Adding to the evidence, they told Asian officials, were traces of plutonium on the outside of casks found in Libya, which they said appeared to match plutonium from the North's main nuclear site, at Yongbyon.
This appears to refer to the information in the Times and Washington Post last week. Two analyses - of the material inside the casks and the casks themselves.
While the leak seems ill-advised in terms of diplomacy, I have to admit that it was nice for a change to see what these guys are doing...if we can believe the leak.