NewsMax.com
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2001

What's really turned off the Pyongyang dictatorship about the advent of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is their determination to construct a stronger defensive shield – stronger than the one proposed in the previous Clinton-Gore administration – to protect American cities from a North Korean nuclear-missile attack.

North Korea is also irked with the United States for what it considers heel-dragging – under former President Bill Clinton – on American promises to help it construct two nuclear power plants.

As part of that deal, negotiated with Clinton in 1994, North Korea agreed to suspend its own nuclear program, which American defense officials feared was being used to develop nuclear weapons that could be turned back upon the United States.

But even amid frustration over slow progress by a U.S. consortium in completing the reactors, there were signs Pyongyang was developing warmer ties with Washington under Clinton.

The former president was set to visit North Korea shortly before he left office, but for some reason canceled.

Here is the thinly veiled threat about long-range nuclear missiles issued Feb. 22 by the North Korean foreign ministry, as reported by the Associated Press:

"We promised not to test-fire long-range missiles during the duration of talks on the missile issue, but we cannot do so indefinitely."

That was a reference to the North Koreans' test-firing a missile over Japan in 1998, followed the next year by its agreement with Clinton to hold off on such tests so long as Washington continued negotiating about Pyongyang's missile program.

"The new U.S. foreign and security team is making a fuss by saying that it will take a hard-line stance on us," the North Korean statement continued.

What senior officials in the Bush-Cheney administration had said was that they would expect reciprocity from Pyongyang in any dealing it might have with the United States.

"But," the North Korean statement went on, "this is an attempt to reverse the past course of conciliatory and cooperative relations between us and the United States, and break our will with force."

Mentioning the Clinton deal to help with nuclear reactors in return for North Korea's suspension of long-range missile tests, the foreign office said:

"If the United States continues to fail to honor the agreement, we don't feel that we should cling to it."

And in an oblique recognition of the Bush-Cheney administration's proposed stronger U.S. missile shield to protect Americans from possible North Korean nuclear strikes, Pyongyang dismissed that as "nothing but a thief's logic."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
North Korea
Missile Defense