President Bush on Thursday announced that he will ease some trade restrictions with North Korea and remove them from the state sponsors of terrorism list in 45 days, following the regime’s declaration of its nuclear activities earlier in the day.
The president, six years after denouncing North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” framed his announcement as an example of multilateral diplomacy by his administration, which has been maligned for what many regard as unilateralism in the invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Bush also injected the developments into the ongoing presidential election, in which the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, has said he will talk directly to rogue leaders such as North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, without preconditions.
Mr. Bush said Pyongyang’s declaration, which was released under the umbrella of talks with the United States and four other countries, demonstrated that direct talks with the totalitarian regime “just didn’t work.”
“Today’s results show that tough multilateral diplomacy can yield results,” Mr. Bush said, speaking to reporters at the White House. “I knew the United States could not solve this problem without partners at the table. Today we have taken an important step in the right direction,” he said.
But major questions remain about several aspects of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The regime in Pyongyang first tested a working nuclear weapon in October 2006, and is thought to have enough fissile material for six to ten bombs.
Pyonyang has promised on Friday to blow up part of its plutonium production facility at Yongbyon.
But North Korea has still not answered outstanding questions about how many nuclear weapons it possesses, how much highly enriched uranium it has produced, and how involved it has been in proliferation of nuclear weapons materials and knowledge.
Mr. Bush acknowledged these shortcomings, and said that the United States has no illusions about the regime in Pyongyang.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said that North Korea must dismantle all of its nuclear facilities, give up its separated plutonium and resolve outstanding questions about its highly-enriched uranium and proliferation activities.
“It must end these activities in a fully verifiable way,” she said.
Mr. Bush said that during the 45-day verification process, the United States will carefully observe North Korea’s actions, and that the removal from the terrorism blacklist and the lifting of the Trading with the Enemy Act will have little impact on North Korea’s economic and diplomatic isolation.
Pyongyang, he said, “will remain one of the most isolated regimes in the world.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.