As reported here, North Korea on Friday asked the chief U.N. atomic inspector to visit four years after expelling his experts and dropping out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty - an encouraging sign the reclusive regime is serious about dismantling its weapons program.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, offered few details about his upcoming trip, which other agency officials said would likely occur in the second week of March.
Still, his announcement was significant because it signaled the North's willingness to subject its nuclear program to outside scrutiny for the first time since withdrawing from the Nonproliferation Treaty in January 2003, just weeks after ordering nuclear inspectors to leave.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this recent development, but at the same time I'm still wary, considering what the North Korean's have done in the past, which has been to say one thing while secretly doing another.
What was that phrase we used with the Soviets? Oh, yeah. Trust, but verify. If it were up to me, we would go light on the "trust" part, and heavy on the "verify" part.
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