White House Shifts Policy on North Korea
NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, after trying to isolate North Korea, will offer Pyongyang concessions if it agrees to halt its nuclear weapons program.
An offer of diplomatic relations and security guarantees signals a major policy shift toward what President Bush has labeled a member of the "axis of evil," the Boston Globe reported.
White House officials emphasized the Bush administration has always stood firm against North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whom it accuses of violating a 1994 agreement freezing Pyongyang's weapons program.
But Bush has little to show for his confrontational approach. North Korea junked a global atomic-weapons treaty earlier this year and now threatens to conduct a nuclear test.
New talks last week convinced Washington the most effective way to defuse one of its most contentious foreign policy crises is to re-emphasize the Clinton administration approach of possible rewards for North Korean cooperation, officials said.
"Now (the administration) has learned the hard way that the solution to this is going to be negotiation," said a State Department official who requested anonymity. "The approach until now has been terribly inefficient and wasteful. We could have been here two years ago."
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
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