Would you buy a used nuclear bomb from this man? The most devastating criticism of the nuclear "disarmament" deal struck with Kim Jong Il's North Korea this week by America, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia is that it rewards an appalling dictator's serial nuclear effrontery in ways that will only encourage Iran's nuclear-charged mullahs and other bomb-seekers in their ambitions. If that is indeed how things play out, the five countries that collectively proved unable or unwilling to stop Mr Kim's nuclear delinquency before his provocative nuclear test last October will have compounded failure with folly: encouraging nuclear wannabes to believe that the more rules they break, the bigger the eventual pay-off; and in the process eviscerating the Nuclear Non-Prolif-eration Treaty (npt) and setting off a dangerous series pf nuclear chain reactions, from East Asia to the Middle East.
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