Test time.
Fuming at the U.N. Security Council for condemning its recent missile launch, North Korea said Tuesday it will restart its plutonium factory, junk all its disarmament agreements and "never participate" again in six-country nuclear negotiations.
The reasoning:
It called the Security Council's statement a "brigandish," "wanton" and "unjust" infringement of its sovereignty. It said that six-party nuclear talks with the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and, even its closest ally, China, had "turned into a platform" for forcing the North to disarm itself and for bringing down its system of government.
"We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces," North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement released by its state news agency.
Will Obama appease as Clinton did, or hard line and stay tough as Bush did, to which now Washington Post actually admits was "sometimes productive?"
If it follows through on Tuesday's bluster, North Korea will walk away from six years of slow, fitful but sometimes productive negotiations that have led to substantial disablement of the North's main nuclear reactor and partial disclosure of the scale of its weapons program.
Will Obama pass or fail this test?
.