N. Korea an absurd pick for U.N. disarmament group

N. Korea an absurd pick for U.N. disarmament group
San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper), July 10, 2011
Posted: 2011-07-12 16:45:06
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/09/INVU1K6NM5.DTL

A few days ago, the United Nations chose North Korea ... as the new president of the U.N.'s Conference on Disarmament, which describes itself as "the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community." Most of the conference's 65-nation membership publicly welcomed the new president, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon endorsed his ascension. Well, not to worry. The new Disarmament Conference president, North Korean So Se Pyong, promised to become "very engaged in moving the conference forward" so that it can "achieve concrete results." How reassuring. Perhaps his country would like to set an example for the world? Actually, North Korea is ... the only state that stubbornly holds on to a nuclear-weapons arsenal even though its leaders know full well that millions of their people are starving to death as a result. Right now, North Korea is facing a famine, and not for the first time. A calamitous food shortage in the late 1990s killed an estimated 2 million people. That time, once the world learned of the problem, months too late, it provided copious aid. This time, almost no one seems willing to help.