It didn’t take long for North Korea to reinterpret the “negotiated” aid-for-disarmament deal. FoxNews reports:

Just hours after announcing the agreement — which clearly states North Korea must “shut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment the Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility” — Pyongyang issued a statement claiming it had agreed only to a “temporary suspension” of its nuclear program.

It didn’t take long for the communist regime to change the language of the tentative agreement. I was quite skeptical when placing the initial news yesterday, which is lower in this post. John Bolton, who has our greatest respect, had these comments about the “deal.”

“I am very disturbed by this deal,” Bolton said in a TV interview. “It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world: ‘If we hold out long enough, wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded,’ in this case with massive shipments of heavy fuel oil for doing only partially what needs to be done.”

Story developing………………

From Wall Street Journal [subscription]:

North Korea’s apparent decision to accept a breakthrough aid-for-disarmament deal boosts U.S. efforts to rein in the spread of nuclear weapons and is a victory for the Bush administration’s battered foreign-policy team.

After a marathon day of bargaining that ended early Tuesday Asia time, delegates from North Korea, its four neighbors and the U.S. signed off on the final text of plan to end North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in return for financial and energy assistance worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The delegates sent the text to their respective capitals for approval by their leaders and planned to meet again later early Tuesday to formally approve it. While North Korea’s representatives signed off on the pact, there’s still a chance its leaders in Pyongyang won’t like it and will block its approval.

Christopher Hill, the U.S. envoy to the talks, told reporters that the final text was “an excellent, excellent draft,” while senior U.S. officials in Washington said that the administration had signed off on the deal and was now simply waiting to hear from North Korea. The other participants in the talks — China, Japan, Russia and South Korea — also are likely to approve it.

If successful, the deal also will mark a triumph for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had to beat back skeptics within the Pentagon and Vice President Cheney’s office who opposed any deal that might strengthen the current North Korean regime.

Diplomats involved in the latest talks say the new deal is different from President Clinton’s 1994 agreement because it requires North Korea to dismantle its only nuclear plant, a small facility in the city of Yongbyon, and allow outside experts to monitor the process.

In addition, the new deal provides a mechanism for the six countries to work on broader goals beyond denuclearization. They include forging diplomatic relations between North Korea and its old enemies Japan and the U.S. and crafting a peace treaty that formally ends the Korean War of the 1950s.

U.S. officials say that the agreement would reward North Korea in phases for making certain moves, with most of the incentives to start with being energy supplies. Separately, the U.S. Treasury Department is preparing to lift restrictions on a Macau bank and unfreeze millions of dollars in North Korean assets.