[Corbu]

Possibly! Tests said there was no radiation in the air.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapc...ple/index.html

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The U.N. Security Council has agreed to vote Saturday on whether to slap sanctions on North Korea over its purported nuclear test, said John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The United States had hoped for a decision on its draft resolution by Friday, but council members agreed to vote a day later, according to Bolton and his Japanese counterpart Kenzo Oshima.

"There may some additional changes to the text," Bolton was quoted as saying by The Associated Press, "but we do have unanimous agreement."

The nuclear standoff came to a head Monday when North Korea said it had tested a nuclear weapon. The claim has yet to be verified, and some analysts have questioned whether the test was successful.

Initial air sampling over North Korea shows no indication of radioactive debris, according to two U.S. government officials with access to classified information. (Watch what 'no sign' of radioactive activity means -- 1:13 Video)

But the officials said that the preliminary data provide no conclusive evidence about the North Korean event. (Full story)

Diplomatic efforts to build an international response to North Korea included a Friday meeting in Beijing between South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.

Their talks came amid signs China and Russia, veto-wielding members of the Security Council, were not prepared to go as far or as fast as their American counterparts.

The Chinese have not said what measures they would support, but they have strongly hinted that they would oppose cutting off North Korea's oil and food supplies, the bulk of which come from China. (Watch how North Korea risks cutting off its money flow -- 2:14 Video)

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Asia next week to shore up alliances in major capitals as well as discuss the North Korean crisis.

Rice will be traveling to Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; and Beijing from Tuesday through October 22, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Friday.

"She's going to be talking about how to go about actually implementing" the expected U.N. resolution, McCormack said.
U.S. softens language

Russian diplomats have suggested delaying a vote on the resolution until next week, and Wang Guangya, Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, on Thursday said his government was amenable to such a delay.

Getting the support of Russia and China is key to getting a sanctions resolution through the Security Council. And China, as North Korea's longtime patron and closest ally, is considered to have the most influence over the country's reclusive communist regime.

To build support for the resolution, the United States has agreed to some changes. They include dropping a ban on North Korean imports and exempting money intended for purchases of food and medicine from a freeze on North Korean assets. Language encouraging further diplomatic efforts also was added to the latest version.

However, the U.S. proposal still calls for an arms embargo and a ban on materials that could be used in North Korea's nuclear or missiles programs. The proposal also seeks a travel ban on North Korean officials, an embargo on luxury goods and inspections of cargo going into and out of North Korea.

China has expressed concern that because the proposed sanctions fall under Section 7 of the U.N. Charter, which makes them binding on all member states, they could lead to a blockade or even military action to enforce them.

Bolton dismissed those concerns, saying it has "never" been the case that a Section 7 resolution authorizes the use of force without additional action by the Security Council.
China takes softer stance

There are indications that the Chinese government -- which offered an unusually forceful denunciation after North Korea's purported test -- may be softening its line.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Thursday that "punishment is not the purpose" of possible U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang -- directly contradicting Guangya's earlier comments that China would support "punitive" measures.

Liu also called on the United States to drop its opposition to direct negotiations with North Korea, saying that "if the two parties can strengthen their dialogue and consultation, this will help strengthen their understanding and mutual trust."

The Bush administration has insisted any negotiations be conducted within the framework of six-party talks that include the two countries and Russia, China, South Korea and Japan. The latest draft of the Security Council resolution calls on North Korea to return to those talks without precondition.
Japan's response

In Tokyo, the Japanese Cabinet on Friday approved wide-ranging sanctions on North Korea. (Full story)

Japan has joined the United States in calling for the Security Council to impose sanctions that would be binding on all U.N. member states in a bid to pressure North Korea to return to negotiations and give up its nuclear ambitions.

President Bush has warned the North Koreans not to act aggressively against its neighbors, saying the United States would honor its commitments to back Japan and South Korea militarily in the event of an attack.

CNN's Hugh Riminton, Richard Roth, Barbara Starr and Susie Xu contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Wall Street journal poses some speculation that it may have been fertilizer, such as in 1947 in Texas City.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110009080

Parody Physics Package?
Kim Jong Il plays high-stakes nuclear poker.

BY RUSSELL SEITZ
Friday, October 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Asked the best place to be if an H-bomb goes off, the gadget's legendary father, Edward Teller, responded, "Standing next to somebody who says: 'What was that?"

Few realize that whatever it was that North Korea detonated on Sunday, it packed barely the explosive force of a 10-yard cube of explosive fertilizer. A hundred thousand bucks' worth of ammonium nitrate could produce much the same bang. Far larger quantities of explosives have gone off accidentally in the last century. Sometimes, these big booms claimed thousands of victims, as at Texas City in 1948. Sometimes, they took only one--the night watchman of the fertilizer plant in Toulouse that disappeared from the face of the Earth in 2001.

Since the Dear Leader is as unpredictable as North Korean society is opaque, it's hard to reckon exactly what he did. Yet if Sunday night's rumble was intended as an entry-level nuclear test, it must have been a disappointment. One twenty-fifth of a Hiroshima may scare the hatpins out of the Better Red Than Deadheads making the pre-election TV rounds, but it won't get a grouch like Kim Jong Il a decent table at the nuclear club. The Dear Leader's half-kiloton debut was 100,000 times less powerful than the world's largest-ever nuclear test, the 59.2 megaton "Tsar Bomba" set off by Kim Il Sung's shoe-pounding pal, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1961.

Little wonder some optimists are muttering that maybe it was not a proper nuke at all. Perhaps it was only a parody physics package, consisting of a huge conventional explosives charge designed to squeeze the pips out of a tiny plutonium kernel. That's what folks in the H-bomb business in Doctor Strangelove's salad days would deride as "using a blast furnace to light a match."

Cold comfort that, within a decade of Hiroshima, Cold War imperatives drove American bomb designers not just to turn A-bombs into the basis for the H-bomb, but to devise nukes that a man could handle and a six-inch howitzer could fire. Could the North Koreans have been equally clever? If so, better watch out--half a kiloton in a suitcase is something bin Laden would cheerfully give his last hundred megabucks to acquire. After all, a suitcase on the loose is a lot harder to target than a wheezy liquid-fuel missile clamped to a fixed launch pad.

What, if anything, the Dear Leader has to bet with is hard to know, because, at the low end of the spectrum, muffling nuclear tests to confuse seismic eavesdroppers is not exactly rocket science. Sucking the air out of an underground test cavern containing a bomb has much the same dampening effect as a large silencer on a small pistol.

This much is certain, though--Murphy's law cuts both ways. In hundreds of experiments by mature nuclear powers, fission tests that fizzle have far outnumbered thermonuclear runaways. But give a man a match, and he can fire off a blast furnace that uses an old-fashioned A-bomb to ignite "fusion fuel," lifting a nuke's explosive yield from kilotons--as at Hiroshima--to megatons. That's how thermonuclear mushroom clouds grew from incandescent atomic acorns--a few kilotons was all it took to trigger the tub-thumping Tsar Bomba.

Fulfilling the late Doctor Teller's "what was that?" criterion in that all-too-real test case would mean standing his imaginary interlocutor 100 miles from Ground Zero. As the Korean peninsula is barely that wide, America's South Korean allies have an understandable interest in exploring alternatives, diplomatic or otherwise.

So it really does not signify whether North Korea's greatest living movie fan thinks he's Doctor No or Yosemite Sam. Though Kim may be persona non grata at the nuclear and Groucho clubs, until we get to see his hole card, he's guaranteed a seat at the poker table.

Mr. Seitz is a former associate at Harvard's Center for International Affairs and consultant to Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Is anyone really surprised?

[Kzin]

Perhaps Kim just formed a diabolical alliance with Fartman.

[Qwo]

Oh man what a twist!

[DUATE]

Originally Posted by Womosexual

Oh man what a twist!

Did M. Knight Shimmyshamalimlam write this?

[Knight of Ni]

Originally Posted by Duate

Did M. Knight Shimmyshamalimlam write this?

As it turns out, North Koreans aren't real, just a tool of fear used by the village elders.

[Corbu]

Originally Posted by Knight of Ni

As it turns out, North Koreans aren't real, just a tool of fear used by the village elders.

And these elders get hurt by water.

[Knight of Ni]

Originally Posted by Corbu Mulak

And these elders get hurt by water.

Thank God atheism is a lie, we might've been defeated.

[Corbu]

which one is that from?

[Hellnikko]

Originally Posted by Corbu Mulak

which one is that from?

Signs?

[Corbu]

Actually, The United States now has preliminary evidence of radioactivity from North Korea's nuclear test ground, indicating it did indeed carry out a test, a U.S. official tells CNN.

Of course, we also had "evidence" that Iraq had WMDs

[Knight of Ni]

Originally Posted by Corbu Mulak

Actually, The United States now has preliminary evidence of radioactivity from North Korea's nuclear test ground, indicating it did indeed carry out a test, a U.S. official tells CNN.

Of course, we also had "evidence" that Iraq had WMDs

Well, there's a difference between scientific evidence and what basically amounted to hearsay.

[Arzen]

Excpet that apparently republicans believe both.

[Corbu]

Just because they SAY they have scientific evidince doesn't mean they have it.

[Kzin]

All Party members were required to give up their watches, which were blown up at ground zero so their tritium would show up .....