WMD Archive

SEOUL, South Korea — The White House is holding back from removing North Korea from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, citing the Kim regime’s failure to live up to a denuclearization agreement reached last year. Earlier this week, the State Department announced the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) had met the technical requirements necessary to be dropped from the blacklist, which carries with it a wide range of sanctions. Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan are the only countries presently on the list. To qualify for de-listing, a state must be free of involvement with terrorist-related activities […]

SEOUL, South Korea — Two weeks after North Korea failed to meet a Dec. 31 deadline to denuclearize, Washington is refraining from setting any new timetables, but has reiterated calls for North Korea to live up to agreements it made in October as part of six-party talks. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. envoy to North Korea, has returned to Washington after making stops in the capitals of the states involved in the six-party talks with North Korea and the United States: Japan, South Korea, China and Russia. He did not meet with nor visit any Pyongyang […]

During the past year, the Implementation Support Unit (ISU), established by the Sixth Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) in December 2006, has provided essential support for international efforts to prevent biological terrorism. Unlike the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the BTWC lacks the large institutional structure to help administer convention-related activities as well as monitor and enforce compliance with its provisions. The three-person ISU, which started work in April 2007 and became fully operational in August 2007, attempts to help fill that gap from its office at the Geneva branch of the […]

A Wednesday report in the German economic daily Handelsblatt makes clear that German-Iranian trade continued to boom in 2007 despite existing U.N. sanctions and international calls to isolate Iran economically. According to statistics cited in a report by Germany’s Federal Trade Agency (BFAI), German exports to Iran are supposed to have declined by 15 percent to around €3.5 billion. However, in what the paper calls a “surprising development,” German imports from Iran actually increased by 50 percent to some €580 million. It should be noted, moreover, that both figures are said to be based on statistical data running only through […]