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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (1960)	3/13/2001 2:15:26 AM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

Conflicting messages cloud U.S. policy Published Monday, March 12, 2001, in the Miami Herald BY WARREN P. STROBEL Herald Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- The United States will negotiate with North Korea, says the secretary of state. No it won't, says the president. The White House and Pentagon want to overthrow Saddam Hussein. State Department officials pour cold water on the idea. During the presidential campaign, George W. Bush's national security advisor suggested that the candidate would begin withdrawing U.S. peacekeeping troops from the Balkans. Last month, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Europeans that President Bush will not do that. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- a blue-chip roster of foreign and defense policy veterans, President Bush's team is having trouble in its early weeks sending a coherent message about its policies in key parts of the world. ``They're communicating a number of precise messages. They just happen to conflict with each other,'' said Kenneth Lieberthal, an Asia specialist on the National Security Council staff under former President Bill Clinton. The missteps could be nothing more than the usual shakedown woes of a new administration that has filled few policymaking slots below the Cabinet level and faces an array of global problems with few easy answers. But they also suggest that Bush's top advisors -- Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice -- are vying for his ear on foreign policy, where the president himself has little experience and where every nuance is dissected by friend and foe. When South Korean President Kim Dae-jung came to Washington last week, seeking Bush's backing in his quest for peace with impulsive North Korea, he was greeted by a U.S. administration with a policy that appeared to veer from conciliatory to hard line, depending on who was explaining it. On the eve of Kim's visit, Powell suggested that the administration would resume negotiations with North Korea on eliminating its missile programs, saying: ``We do plan to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off.'' That ``probably wasn't the best choice of words,'' said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity. It certainly was not the message from the White House, and the secretary of state changed course the next morning, telling reporters that ``there's no hurry'' to engage North Korea. Bush himself voiced deep skepticism about whether the reclusive communist state could be trusted. A senior administration official said Powell realized that he had left the impression that the negotiations would resume right away. ``What Powell didn't do on Tuesday was to give it a time frame,'' said the official, who also requested anonymity. Some officials said the comments reflect an internal debate over how to deal with North Korea. Powell and others argue that the administration should quickly revive Clinton's attempts to negotiate a missile agreement with Pyongyang, which would ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the senior administration official said. Rice and others want to pause before moving forward. Asked Friday if there were any disagreement between Powell and Bush on dealings with North Korea, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher replied simply: ``No.'' North Korea is not the only subject of debate within the administration. More than once, there appears to have been a gap between Powell's conservative but pragmatic views and the more hard-edged policies generally favored by Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld. Although officials held four White House meetings, including a Cabinet-level Principals Committee meeting and a formal National Security Council meeting with the president, to coordinate Iraq policy, White House officials were startled by how far Powell went in suggesting that the administration favors relaxing some sanctions on Baghdad. The secretary of state, said another White House official who asked not to be identified, ``stole a bit of a march on the Iraq policy.'' White House and Pentagon officials do not oppose adjusting the sanctions, which are being routinely violated, anyway. But they stress a different goal: overthrowing Hussein with the help of Iraqi opposition groups. miami.com