Bush’s N. Korea policy draws right jab

Conservative critics of the Bush administration’s North Korea policy — including former top security officials from the president’s first term — say they are not assuaged by the administration’s latest move to toughen the terms of a deal to end Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons programs.

These opponents say the administration repeatedly has offered concessions to keep the deal alive, even as North Korea has tested a nuclear device, ignored international sanctions, repressed dissent at home and now stands accused of helping Syria develop a secret nuclear program.

“Allowing North Korea to win its Cold War with the world will go down in history as one of the most remarkable and disturbing elements in the Bush administration legacy,” said David Asher, who coordinated the State Department’s North Korea Working Group from 2001 to 2005 before leaving the administration.

The Washington Times reported last week that U.S. negotiators had won a tentative agreement from Pyongyang to release thousands of additional records dating back nearly 20 years on its Yongbyon nuclear site, considered a critical facility in the North’s nuclear drive.

Administration officials said they sought access to the new files in part to counter criticisms that they were lowering the bar in the talks with Pyongyang.

The North missed a Dec. 31 deadline to reveal all of its nuclear assets, part of a February 2007 deal under which the North promised to eventually end all its nuclear programs in exchange for economic aid and diplomatic concessions from the United States and its allies.

Conservative critics also have slammed the administration for easing the reporting requirements for the North’s nuclear declaration, and for hinting the North could be dropped from the official U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states while a number of proliferation and espionage issues remain unresolved.

The skepticism is shared on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers of both parties last week complained of being kept largely in the dark about intelligence regarding North Korea’s Syria connection.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would force President Bush to certify that North Korea had completely dismantled its nuclear-weapons assets before the North could be removed from the terror list.

A day later, White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to suggest a new deadline for North Korea’s nuclear declaration, noting a State Department team was in Pyongyang just the previous week.

“We just counsel some patience and wait to see what we get back from the North Koreans in terms of their declaration,” Mr. Fratto said.

U.S. officials acknowledge that deadlines have been missed, but say the deal already has succeeded in shutting down the Yongbyon reactor. North Korea has agreed to demolish the cooling tower at the site when it is formally dropped from the terror list.

John R. Bolton, the lead nonproliferation official in the State Department in Mr. Bush’s first term, has been the most outspoken ex-official to attack the North Korea talks. But he is not the only one.

Carolyn Leddy, who served with Mr. Bolton in the State Department and then was the director of counterproliferation strategy at the National Security Council from July 2006 to November 2007, denounced the administration’s “feckless and dangerous” North Korea policy last week at a forum sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.

“I’m not talking about some conservative conspiracy to derail the talks,” she said. “This administration has always lacked the will to apply and sustain pressure on the North Korean regime to actually make any kind of difference.”

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