クリス・ヒルが来る、気になるアメリカの態度

　朝からニュースになっているヒル来日、トム・ケーシーがああいったのこう言ったの、それを承けてマコーマックがああいったのこう言ったのって話ですが、実は朝から娘と黒鯛釣りに出かけちゃったものでニュースを丹念にあたってる時間がなかった。

　帰ってます国務省の定時会見を覗いてみたのですが、マコーマックは相も変わらずのらりくらりで核心的な部分はグレーです。
そして話題となったケーシーの発言はテキストになってない。

　いずれにしろ既に中国は「制裁解除」を口にしているわけですから、そこをまたアメリカが押し負けるかどうか？
ヒルが来てみりゃわかりますが、この中から窺えるアメリカの既定の方針というのは質疑応答の太字部分に表れており、「譲る」ということだと思った方が良いんでしょう。
となると展開如何では噂の「米朝国交樹立かそれに準ずる事態」の発生も排除できないわけで、だとすればアメリカは日本を置き去りにする、ブッシュは安部ちゃんを見捨てるということです。

Daily Press Briefing
Sean McCormack, Spokesman
QUESTION: Can you expand any more on what Tom said this morning about Chris Hill's travel plans?
MR. MCCORMACK: No.

QUESTION: No, okay. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: Thank you. All right, well -- (Laughter.)
MR. MCCORMACK: I certainly do, but I'm not telling you. (Laughter.)
MR. MCCORMACK: No, Tom -- let me run through the basic schedule once again for those who might have missed it.
Chris Hill, our Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, not just the six-party talks, is going to be traveling to the region on Thursday, beginning Thursday, July 12th for consultations with counterparts regarding six-party talks.
He'll be in Tokyo July 13th and 15th for those of you who wish to stalk him. (Laughter.)
And on -- Seoul July 15th through the 17th and he'll arrive in Beijing on the 17th.
Now he's going to be having consultations with Chinese authorities.
I think one might presume that if there were to be six-party talks, that he would be in place to have those six-party talks, but the Chinese Government has not yet made any official announcements in that regard and I think we're also still looking for what kind of momentum we can build up in terms of meeting the February agreement before we have an official announcement.

QUESTION: But you don't feel that it's necessary for the North Koreans to actually take some steps to shut down Yongbyon?
MR. MCCORMACK: We'll see.
This is -- again, the 18th would be after, presumably, they have talked about the timeframe that they might shut down Yongbyon.
They've talked about timing the shutdown of Yongbyon to the arrival of that first small tranche of the 50,000 tons of fuel oil.
That is scheduled to happen, I think, this weekend on Saturday.
So we'll see.
We'll see what the timing is and we'll see if it is appropriate to have those discussions.
As I said, Chris would be in place in the case that there were those discussions and in any case, it's useful for him to go out to the region in anticipation of some future six-party talks, whether that is next week or sometime thereafter.

QUESTION: But you continue to say that there's no link necessarily between the two; in other words, they can stiff you on Yongbyon and you might still have six-party talks?
MR. MCCORMACK: As I have said before, I'm not going to tie our hands diplomatically, but everybody agrees, I believe, among the five parties certainly, that it would be good to have that next envoys level meeting actually build on some momentum that was already there instead of relying upon just the meeting to develop some momentum.