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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (5786)	1/6/2003 12:49:42 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 15516

Democrats Blast Bush on North Korea Policies Sun Jan 5, 4:20 PM ET story.news.yahoo.com By Vicki Allen WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Washington prepared for talks on the North Korean crisis with South Korean and Japanese envoys, Democrats on Sunday blasted President Bush handling of the nuclear confrontation and urged him to open talks with Pyongyang. Amid an escalating war of words between Washington and Pyongyang, South Korea is sending a top presidential security aide and a separate delegation to Washington this week as part of a broader diplomatic push by Seoul to end the standoff with North Korea Democrats, who will be a minority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives when the 108th Congress begins on Tuesday, said Bush's policy toward North Korea had been an erratic failure leading to the current standoff over its plans to restart a nuclear program. Several lawmakers urged Bush to reopen a dialogue with Pyongyang, and to seriously consider a compromise being pushed by South Korea in which the United States pledges not to attack North Korea if it abandons its nuclear weapons program. "We don't know what the details of the plan are, but we should welcome South Korea being involved this way, making suggestions," outgoing Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman b>Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said on "Fox News Sunday." "Instead, the administration, at least half the time, has said we're not going to have any discussions with North Korea, we're just simply not going to talk with North Korea. That is wrong," Levin said. The Bush administration has said it will not negotiate with Pyongyang, saying it must comply with a 1994 agreement under which it was to mothball its nuclear programs, which could produce weapons, in return for oil shipments. South Korean officials in Washington on Monday are expected to pitch their compromise intended to quell the crisis that has worsened since Pyongyang in late December expelled atomic energy inspectors who were there under the 1994 deal. On Sunday, Seoul announced that its presidential secretary for foreign affairs and security, would fly to Washington on Tuesday to discuss the crisis with top U.S. officials. Levin said reopening talks with North Korea "doesn't imply concessions," but means "we're going to discuss the differences -- and they are major -- that we have with North Korea, in order to avoid miscalculation, in order that they can hear from us face-to-face what our problems are with their behavior." North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat who last week announced he will run for president in 2004, said on "ABC This Week" Bush's policy in North Korea "has been a failure," and said Washington's deteriorating relationship with South Korea demands top-level attention. HAGEL URGES RENEWED DIALOGUE Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who frequently has found himself at odds with Bush's foreign policy, also urged a renewed dialogue with North Korea, saying the United States must "get off the high horse here and deal as directly as we need to deal with this." Hagel, appearing on CNN's Late Edition, said the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed on the Korean peninsula are "captive to whatever happens there. Now, that's one of the reasons the North Korean situation, in my opinion, is far more serious than Iraq." While Hagel said the United States "should listen carefully" to the South Korean compromise plan, his fellow Senate Republican, John McCain of Arizona, said the United States must not take the threat of military action against North Korea off the table with a nonaggression commitment. "We should never abandon the military option when we are facing a direct threat to the United States of America. It is, however, the absolute last, last resort," McCain said on CBS's "Face the Nation." He dismissed the South Korean compromise as having "zero effect" because the United States cannot agree to return to the 1994 agreement without changes. He suggested that the United States should clear the way for Japan to have nuclear weapons as a counter-threat to Pyongyang. Levin said the Bush administration had already been too threatening toward North Korea, citing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's statement that the United States could fight two major regional conflicts, Iraq and North Korea, without adding that war with Pyongyang was not in U.S. plans.