On last night's WMD Program on Wide Awakes Radio, we talked a little bit about Sen. Lugar's asinine idea that we should engage the North Koreans bi-laterally. Today, Sean McCormack, the State Department's spokeman, chimes in:
QUESTION: If we can stay on the nuclear subject. Senator Lugar yesterday said that the United States will -- eventually will have to have direct bilateral talks with North Korea. He said that it's going to happen, and it should happen sooner rather than later. So do you have --
MR. MCCORMACK: Well, we -- again, we have, you know, in this building great respect for Senator Lugar. He is an experienced wise voice on foreign policy. But there is this myth out there that somehow we don't talk with the North Koreans directly. We have on many occasions within the context of the six-party talks. But -- and we're willing to do that again. The Secretary has made that clear. Within the context of the six-party talks we are absolutely willing to talk to the North Koreans. Chris Hill has done it previously. He is ready to do it again. He's ready to have dinner with them again. He's ready to sit down with them again in the context of the six-party talks.
But the idea that you deal with North Korea in a strictly bilateral sense is one that's been tried and unfortunately has failed. And you -- we are now in a position where North Korea, when it persists in bad behavior in the vain of launching missiles, conducting a nuclear test. It's no longer -- it's not a U.S.-North Korea issue. This is now an issue where you have the Security Council and the other five parties of six-party talks united in putting pressure on North Korea to get them to change their behavior.
If you had just bilateral discussions -- imagine if we were just in a bilateral arrangement right now. On the playing field you would have North Korea and the United States. Everybody else on the sidelines saying, you got to make a deal. You got to make a deal. U.S. -- you got to accede to the North Korean demands. That's you know, you're not going to win too many hands of poker that way, I'll tell you that. You now have everybody else in the game. And it is now the other five parties of the six-party talks allayed speaking with one voice towards North Korea, saying change your behavior and if you don't change your behavior, if you persist in the negative behaviors that you have demonstrated, there are going to consequences. There are going to be diplomatic consequences to that. And it is going to become increasingly uncomfortable for the North Korean regime in terms of the sanctions that are applied to it. So again I think we -- this is no doubt a very, very difficult issue. But we believe that we are on the proper course.
QUESTION: Sorry. I think what Senator Lugar meant was that maybe the North Koreans need to be reassured that the U.S. doesn't want to overthrow their regime to --
MR. MCCORMACK: Secretary Rice has been asked this question many times. The President has been asked this question many times.
QUESTION: But one to one.
MR. MCCORMACK: We have -- again, we were sitting across the table from them. We signed on to the September 19th Framework Agreement. We have told them repeatedly the words of the President of the United States standing in South Korea, saying we have no intention to invade or attack you. And we have provided those assurances repeatedly. Secretary Powell has, Secretary Rice has reiterated those assurances.
So, you know, I don't know what more you need than the word of the President of the United States on that score. And in terms of other issues regarding the peninsula, those are outlined very clearly in the September 19th Framework Agreement. If you look at it, it talks about addressing the current state of play on the Korean Peninsula where you have a suspension of hostilities via a treaty but formalizing that. So there are a lot of different ways to get at the stated North Koreans concerns. And you have to just wonder if, in fact,these sorts of concerns that they continue to throw out and say that the United States and the six-parties -- other members of the six-party talks haven't met those, whether or not those are just excuses for not dealing with the core issues. And we'll see. We'll see what their true intentions are here. We hope that that they would see it clear to come back to the six-party talks and to engage in a constructive manner.
That was one way to say... I'd have said something along the lines of "Sen. Lugar would do well to try to win the Presidency himself if he thinks he knows everything..."
