Ploughshares-funded delegation visits North Korea

Seven experts and former government officials from the U.S. are en route to North Korea, and are due to arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday in the first major civilian visit from Washington under the Obama administration.  The delegation, funded in part by Ploughshares Fund,  includes former Assistant Secretary of State Morton Abramowitz and Ploughshares Fund grantee Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council. 

Read Sigal's article "What Obama Should Offer North Korea" in the online Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  His top recommendation is  that "after consulting with South Korea and Japan, the Obama administration should promptly send a high-level emissary, perhaps former President Bill Clinton or former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to Pyongyang to offer a little more for a little more. For example, that emissary could reaffirm the promise to deliver energy assistance in return for North Korea completing the disablement of its plutonium facilities and disposal of replacement fuel rods."