North Korea Watch: Senators Hagel and Luger Call for Direct North Korea Talks – Rule Out Preemptive Strike
Former South Korean spy soldiers demonstrate with a mock missile on top of their van at a rally near former President Kim Dae-jung’s home, to oppose Kim’s plan to visit North Korea, in Seoul June 25, 2006.
AP: Sen. calls for direct talks with N. Korea
Leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Sunday the Bush administration should talk directly with North Korea as concerns grow over a possible test launch of a missile that could reach the U.S.
Senators also rejected the idea by a former defense secretary that the U.S. make a pre-emptive strike against a North Korean missile.
“We are not anywhere close to talking about attacking North Korea, and we should shut up and stop it,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record), R-Neb.
“We need to talk directly with North Korea. The sooner we do that, the sooner we’re going to get this resolved,” Hagel, the second-ranking Republican on the committee, told CNN’s “Late Edition.”
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Richard Lugar (news, bio, voting record), also spoke out against attacking the missile while it was on the ground.
“It would be advisable to bring about a much greater intensification of diplomacy, and this may involve direct talks between the United States and North Korea,” said Lugar, R-Ind.
North Korea long has wanted direct meetings with the U.S. Washington, however, has refused, insisting it will only meet the North Koreans in the context of six-nation international talks aimed at ridding the communist country of its nuclear weapons program.
Flap thinks that Senators Hagel and Lugar should simply shut up and allow the State, Defense Departments and President Bush deal with the North Koreans. They are only Senators from small Midwestern states and have not been elected to conduct United States foreign policy – regardless of their Senate committee assignments.
Also, Senator Lugar, does this mean everytime a nation threatens the United States that you wish to diectly negotiate with them about said threat.? Pretty absurd position, Senator.
Meanwhile, earlier today Japan has threatened North Korea with economic sanctions and North Korea has responded.
NORTH Korea has scorned a Japanese threat to impose economic sanctions in response to human rights abuses or a threatened missile test by the Stalinist state.
“The independent national economy in the DPRK (North Korea) is not such a weak one to be affected or shaken by sanctions from other countries,” the North Korean government newspaper Minju Joson said.
North Korea has boycotted the six-nation nuclear disarmament talks since November 2005 in protest to United States financial sanctions relating to American charges of money-laundering and counterfeiting.
Now is not the time to return to direct negotiations as a result of a nuclear missile test launch/threat. It encourages bad behavior which must be extinguished.
Stay tuned……
A commercial satellite photo of North Korea’s Nodong missile launch site taken on by a Digital Globe satellite and annotated and released by analysts at GlobalSecurity.org on May 24, 2006. The United States and Japan warned North Korea on Monday against a missile launch that experts say could reach as far as Alaska and threatened harsh action if the test flight goes ahead.
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