[2중급용] 3 Did Bush Get the N.Korea Deal He Needs in Geneva?

'Did Bush Get the N.Korea Deal He Needs in Geneva?
North Korea on Sunday agreed to report
all nuclear programs
and disable its nuclear facilities
by the end of the year.
Some experts are saying
this was prompted by a key concession
on the part of U.S. President George W. Bush
to strike the North from the U.S. list of states
sponsoring terrorism and lift the Trade
with Hostile Nations Act.
Pyongyang has linked these two demands
with its declaration
and disablement of nuclear programs
under a Feb. 13 six-nation agreement.

Bush called a press conference on Friday,
a day before the breakthrough working-group meetings
in Geneva
on normalizing Washington-Pyongyang relations.
"The question is, can it happen before I am through?”
he said. ”Yes, it can. I hope so."
He sent a message to Pyongyang
by saying, "I've made my choice."
This is a marked change in attitude
given his earlier descriptions of North Korea
as part of an "axis of evil" or a "rogue state."
Political circles in Washington see
Bush's latest message as a sign
he will favor flexible give-and-take
in negotiations with the North --
his message suggests
he could accept Pyongyang's demands
and even speed up the normalization of ties.

The change is being attributed
to the deteriorating situation
for the U.S. in Iraq,
which means Bush is
in dire need of a success story
as his tenure nears its end.
Despite the “surge” of 30,000 American soldiers in Iraq,
that is unlikely to happen there.
One source said Bush seems to believe
that the North Korean nuclear issue is “
still a chance to recover his mistake in Iraq to some extent,
even if it isn’t such a big deal in the U.S.
as it is in South Korea.”
Of course, it all depends on
whether Pyongyang keeps up its part of the bargain.
Plus there is Japan, a key regional partner for the U.S.,
which has insisted
that the North should only be struck
from the list of terror sponsors
if it addresses the issue of Japanese citizens
it abducted in the 1970s and 80s
to Tokyo’s satisfaction