American Diplomatic Drive Comes Up Short

WASHINGTON - Bush administration persistence in using diplomacy to solve a nuclear weapons crisis with North Korea (news - web sites) is coming up short as the insular regime bobs and weaves away from resuming negotiations.



The faltering effort is having a divisive effect on U.S. relations with South Korea (news - web sites) and Japan, which have blamed U.S. inflexibility for North Korea's refusal to halt its atomic weapons program.


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Rose Gotemoeller, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tends to agree with the criticism from South Korea and Japan.


"The way in which the administration has relied on diplomacy is to take a very hard line and stick with it, and not be willing to explore possible avenues of resolution," the former Clinton administration official said Monday.


"That's not diplomacy, that's standing tough," she said.

more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=693&e=3&u=/ap/20041214/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_korean_nuclear

So, I guess the next thing we'll hear...Diplomacy has failed, the US is out of options. To protect the US and fight them on their soil we must attack NK and Iran. :eyes:

please help us all.

We allowed our military to be bogged down in Iraq, we are out of military options. North Korea can do just about anything it wants to...

for not making any progress with. Kim is not a normal negotiating party.

Not that that means an attack would be justified.

Even so, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and other critics suggested before the war with Iraq that North Korea posed a bigger threat than Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government in Baghdad.

Writing two years ago, after North Korea had reopened its plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, Christopher said North Korea was within six months of being able to produce sufficient weapons-grade material to generate several nuclear bombs.

"Contrast that with Iraq," Christopher said. "Not only is North Korea much further along than Iraq in building nuclear weapons, but by virtue of its longer-range missiles it has a greater delivery capability."

On Monday, a U.S. official who keeps close watch on North Korea said it definitely has produced at least two atomic bombs. Some analysts in the administration believe it has made even more.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=693&e=1&u=/ap/20041214/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_korean_nuclear

We attack the weakest of the Axis of Evil.... :eyes: And no WMD's have been found to date.

whether we like it or not. It's going to happen. Our efforts might be better spent trying to bring countries like North Korea back into the mainstream of nations by offering them aid and ceasing to ostracize them at every opportunity. It just makes them paranoid and more dangerous.