The criticism is coming from an unexpected source. Gregg is a former adviser to the first President Bush, an ex-CIA official who served as chief of station for the CIA in South Korea from 1973 to 1975. President George H.W. Bush appointed him as U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 1989 to 1993.

In addition to charging the U.S. with "demonizing" North Korea, a regime that is allowing mass starvation among its people in order to finance its nuclear and military buildup, Gregg told Montana's Missoulian newspaper that although it is likely that North Korea does have nuclear weapons, the most they could be used for is self-defense.

Gregg seemed to dismiss both North Korea's threatening gestures and the fact that it has test-fired nuclear-capable missiles toward Japan.

By demonizing North Korea, Gregg said, the Bush administration has an excuse to justify building an expensive missile defense program and creating an international bogeyman to justify alleged U.S. militancy.

This policy, he said, appears to be in direct contradiction to U.S. policy under Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. He recalled that during his most recent trip, in August 2004, the North Korean officials he visited were anxious to know how to re-establish relations.

"They were saying, 'We've watched you go to war [in Iraq] on the basis of erroneous intelligence of weapons of mass destruction - we're concerned you might do the same with us,'" Gregg told the Missoulian's Rob Chaney. "They're wondering, 'How can we talk to the Americans when they think we're devils?'"

Gregg blamed what he sees as the problem on what he called Bush's personal dislike of North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Il, one of the world's most brutal dictators.

Gregg cited opposing views, including former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and South Korean officials who say that Kim Jong Il is more favorably inclined toward the United States than many others in his government.

"The stone in the road is President Bush's ad hominem animosity against Kim Jong Il," Gregg said. "I think he's hoping that pressure will bring about regime change. And it may well, and we may get someone much worse for our interests."

Said Gregg: "Bush has created a face problem for himself. It's mystifying why Bush people don't take care of an issue that's much easier to deal with than, for example, the Middle East."

Gregg claimed that the South Koreans see big benefits in reunification, or at least normalized relations throughout the peninsula, and added that the Chinese have much to gain by spreading their influence along the Asian coast of the Pacific as well.

He said that South Korea already trades more with China than the United States and that the Russians see better ports and transportation systems to get their eastern natural resources to better markets. The major Russian city of Vladivostok sits near North Korea's northeastern border.

Gregg may have a slight conflict of interest in promoting North Korea's interests - he is now president of the Korea Society, a nonprofit agency arranging business and cultural contacts between the United States and both North and South Korea.

Editor's note: