North Korea Classics: Chris Hill Can Do Business With This Man?

Shades of Kofi Annan saying he could “do business” with Saddam Hussein.

Now we have the U.S. envoy to the Six-Party Talks on North Korea, Chris Hill, chatting away on NPR about how in his work he can “rely” on the North Koreans.

Here’s a link to the broadcast, and below is a transcipt of the exchange in which Hill, spinning like an Iranian centrifuge, spells out his astounding piece of information:

NPR: Do you think you have found North Koreans you can look in the eye and trust?

Hill: Well, I think there are people we can talk to seriously, where we can lay out some ideas for how to go forward, where they will lay out some ideas, and we can rely on what they say, that they will do what they say. So, if that’s what you mean by trust, I guess there are.

Just who are these people? And what have they been telling Hill they will do?

Clearly he’s not talking about the North Koreans he’s actually been negotiating with, because they told him on Feb 13 that within 60 days North Korea would shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and disclose all its nuclear programs. The deadline is tomorrow, and none of that has happened. Instead, the main event has been Hill’s hustling to get back to Kim Jong Il some $25 million that had been frozen at the behest of the U.S. Treasury in Banco Delta Asia in Macau. Here’s my column today on that $25 million, and what might be called the State Department program for Plutonium in Our Time.