Monday, July 11, 2011

Canada boycotts arms meeting

I rarely agree with the Harper Government on anything.    But on this one, I do.    We have every right, indeed the duty, to boycott a disarmament conference if the country chairing the meeting is North Korea.   I'm not making this up.

How is it possible to trust a country who claims it wants to disarm but has already several warheads in its possession?    They still haven't figured out how to successfully test a three-stage rocket but if they actually ever do then the DPRK will pose a direct threat not just to the West Coast of North America but also to the eastern fringes of the NATO alliance and otherwise neutral EU member states -- in which case it'll be everyone's business.

This country doesn't even feed its own people, to the point where Koreans from the North are several inches shorter than their Southern counterparts.   And you can be sure that for the lucky few who have made it out of the country, they will never admit to being from the North on census forms for all the obvious reasons.

On the Middle East, Harper doesn't get it.   On Asia-Pacific affairs, though, he's generally correct.   We need to continue to turn up the heat, including the maintaining of the year long suspension of direct contacts until the North starts behaving like a proper country should.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Chairmanship of the disarmament conference rotates alphabetically.

In addition, the chairmanship is nothing special. Decisions are made on the basis of consensus, so North Korea has just as much power to block an agenda simply by being a member of the committee as it does being chair.

Nothing has functionally changed, so this is just a bunch of political grandstanding. When Canada's turn as chair comes up later this year, will the boycott continue since NK is still a committee member?