Former Vice President Al Gore may be sent to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American journalists on trial, the AFP reported.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for Gore’s California-based Current TV, were arrested March 17 near the North Korean border while on a reporting trip to China on charges they entered the country illegally and engaged in “hostile acts” — allegations that could draw a 10-year sentence in a labor camp. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly did not rule out the possibility of Gore being sent when asked if it would make sense for him to go.
“It’s a very, very sensitive issue, I’m not going to go into it,” Kelly told reporters. “This is such a sensitive issue, I’m just not going to go into those kinds of discussions that we may or may not have had,” he said about whether Gore himself had raised the matter with the State Department. “The bottom line is that these two young women should be released but I’m not going to go into any kind of details on what we will or won’t do,” Kelly said. North Korea was silent Friday about the fate of the journalists, who were supposed to go on trial a day earlier.
Their trial began in the communist country’s highest court at a time of mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula following the regime’s provocative May 25 nuclear test. As the United Nations and Washington discussed how to punish the regime for its defiance, there were fears the women could become political pawns in the standoff with Pyongyang.
Analyst Choi Eun-suk, a professor of North Korean law at Kyungnam University, said the court could convict the women, and then the government could use them as bargaining chips with the United States.
“The North is likely to release and deport them to the U.S. — if negotiations with the U.S. go well,” Choi said.
Hmmm, are you thinking what I’m thinking?
#33/#34:
I’m acting like an idiot, because that’s about how mature Dallas’s “don’t you have anything better to do?” attack was.
I can’t help rolling my eyes when someone on a message board is all, “tsk tsk! you’re posting on the internet and that means you’re a looser because you have free time!”
It’s ironic because they’re also posting on an internet message board. And I can’t express how much that pisses me off short of acting like an idiot.
#37, ‘dro,
The topic is sending Al Gore to North Korea to negotiate the release of two journalists. It is called a diplomatic mission. There is nothing here about them being his employees.
Instead you are trying to sidetrack the issue to something you would rather baselessly rant about.
You’ve been reading too many of Cow-Patty’s and Alphie’s posts. Again, you have nothing intelligent to say.