In his 2002 State of the Union address George W. Bush mentioned North Korea as a member of the “Axis of Evil” along with Iran and Iraq. It was an obvious ploy to shore up support for the eventual war in Iraq as North Korea later went largely ignored. It was even officiallyremoved from the imaginary list in June 2008 to distract from the fact that Bush and Co totally dropped the supposedly uranium-filled ball on that one.
Since Bush went against a number of treaties established by the Clinton Administration it was to be expected that newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be very critical of said mistakes. She did so in a statement today:
“The (1994) Agreed Framework was torn up on the basis of the concerns about the highly-enriched-uranium program,” Clinton said. “There is no debate that, once the Agreed Framework was torn up, the North Koreans began to reprocess plutonium with a vengeance because all bets were off. The result is they now have nuclear weapons, which they did not have before.“
She did, however, also voice optimism that past mistakes could not only be reversed but also offer other opportunities:
“My goal is the denuclearization of North Korea,” Clinton said. “That means a verifiably complete accounting of whatever programs they have and the removal of the reprocessed plutonium that they were able to achieve because they were given the opportunity to do so.”
“When they move forward” on ending the program, she added, “we have a great openness to working with them,” including “a willingness to help the people of North Korea.” Via Washington Post
