‘Axis of evil’ member to be scratched from list

Six years after he identified a three-nation “axis of evil” and five years after he invaded one of them, President Bush has declared another of those nations safer as a result of diplomacy and agreed to remove it from the U.S. blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism.

His decision Thursday, ending a series of sanctions on North Korea to reward it for providing an overdue account of its nuclear activities, underscored the dramatic changes in the president’s foreign policy since the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Bush and his senior advisers sought to play down the significance of that shift by insisting that the administration’s stance on Pyongyang remains tough, and that the easing of sanctions was “relatively minor.” The State Department released a long list of penalties that will not be affected by Thursday’s move.

“It will remain one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world,” Mr. Bush said of the communist country, adding that his actions will “have little impact on North Korea’s financial and diplomatic isolation.”

The president, in his 2002 State of the Union address, labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea part of “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” He and his aides sidestepped questions on Thursday about what happened to the “axis,” saying only that each of the countries is unique.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey even joked that North Korea never “got its membership card.” He said the administration has “done what we could” to deal with the threat identified by the president in his 2002 State of the Union address.

In North Korea’s case, Mr. Bush said that diplomacy has worked, but there is much more work to be done to rid the North of its nuclear weapons and programs, and he has “no illusions about the regime in Pyongyang.”

“Today’s developments show that tough multilateral diplomacy can yield promising results,” he said. “We remain deeply concerned about North Korea’s human rights abuses, uranium-enrichment activities, nuclear testing and proliferation, ballistic-missile programs, and the threat it continues to pose to South Korea and its neighbors.”

Mr. Casey said a multilateral deal with economic and political incentives similar to the one reached with North Korea has been offered to Iran - the only remaining “axis” member - but that Iran has rejected all appeals for it to rein in its nuclear programs.

North Korea on Thursday handed its 60-page nuclear declaration to China, which hosts six-country talks on disarming the North. It was due by Dec. 31, but a dispute with the United States over its content led to a delay, which stalled the negotiations.

The document now provides an extensive account of Pyongyang’s plutonium program, including the amount of produced plutonium, but not the number of nuclear weapons in existence. It has a separate acknowledgement of U.S. concerns about uranium enrichment and proliferation, but no disclosure on either issue, U.S. officials said.

The six parties are the U.S., North Korea, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is visiting Asia, said the administration will verify the accuracy of the declaration over the next 45 days - a required period before the removal from the terrorism list can take effect. If the North has cheated, the lifted sanctions will be reimposed, she said.

Mr. Bush eased some trade restrictions under the Trading With the Enemy Act that involve licensing requirements for Americans who want to import goods from North Korea, as well as provisions that affect Americans involved in shipping goods from other countries into North Korea and some prohibitions on financial transfers by the North Korean government.

The president, however, signed an executive order to keep in place other sanctions, including those on interaction of Americans with ships flying the North Korean flag and on certain North Korean assets.

Story Continues →