White House Won’t Allow Pyongyang’s Missile Test to Become American-North Korea Issue

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration declared Wednesday it won’t allow North Korea’s test-firing of missiles to become a Washington-Pyongyang standoff, saying global expressions of revulsion dramatize concern over its nuclear intentions.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, talking with reporters at the State Department as she met with Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs, Abdullah Gul, said that expressions of outrage demonstrate “it is now not a matter of the United States and North Korea.”The United States still believes six-party talks with North Korea offer the best opportunity for resolving the nuclear impasse, she said, adding that “the international community does have at its disposal a number of tools to make it more difficult for the North Koreans to engage in this kind of brinkmanship.”“I can’t really judge the motivations of the North Korean regime, I wouldn’t begin to try,” Rice added. But she did suggest that the North Koreans may have miscalculated how the tests would be seen, saying “they have gotten a very strong reaction from the international community.”Rice said that Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who oversees the stalled negotiations with North Korea, was in touch with the other countries at the six-party table. They are China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.Rice added that she believes “it would still be incumbent on the North Koreans to use that kind of infrastructure to address these issues.”The White House earlier had said that the missile tests were a rebuff of international demands to stop its nuclear weapons program and did not set up a standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.“This is not a U.S.-North Korea matter and we’re not going to let the leader of North Korea transform it into that,” said press secretary Tony Snow. Like Rice, he reiterated America’s desire for multilateral _ not one-on-one diplomacy _ with the reclusive communist nation.Hill, in an interview with The Associated Press, said he would leave Wednesday night for Beijing and continue on for talks with officials in other countries involved int he negotiations, South Korea, Japan and Russia.“We have a lot of support in a lot of places,” Hill said, but he hoped the unity would be strengthened in the talks he would be holding with the other participants.While Hill was reluctant to say what the Bush administration could do specifically, he said there would probably be some kind of resolution adopted in the Security Council. He declined to provide any details.Snow said that North Korea could test fire a few more short- to medium-range missiles on top of the seven already fired, “but honestly we don’t know what to expect.”The United States and Japan asked the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency session Wednesday, but Snow declined to disclose details about options the United States might be considering.The test-firings of seven missiles _ including a long-range missile designed to reach U.S. soil _ began as America celebrated the Fourth of July. It raised the stakes in a nuclear crisis and pressured the U.S. and its partners to penalize Pyongyang. North Korea fired a seventh missile early Wednesday, after the initial round of world reaction.Unlike during previous North Korean missile launches, the U.S. military now has a missile defense system. A couple of weeks ago, when the United States learned that the North Koreans were preparing to launch a Taepodong-2, U.S. officials said the U.S. missile defense system was “operational,” meaning it was ready for possible use in the event of a threatening North Korean missile launch. The officials said at the time that the administration was considering circumstances under which it might try to shoot down a North Korea missile.Snow said the U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for defending U.S. territory, has concluded with a high degree of confidence that North Korea’s test of the long-range Taepodong-2, believed capable of reaching American soil, failed within a minute after liftoff, and was not aborted.“The failure of the Taepodong shows their missile talk is greater than their capability,” said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who urged sustained diplomacy to defuse rising tensions.The White House said that regardless of whether the series of launches occurred as planned, they demonstrate North Korea’s intent to intimidate other states by developing missiles of increasingly longer ranges. The administration urged North Korea to refrain from further provocative acts, including further ballistic missile launches.The challenge for President Bush is to mobilize international support for penalizing the North Koreans. The United States and several of North Korea’s neighbors had issued stern warnings, saying a missile test would mean further isolation and sanctions.Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the testing an ill-advised move by “an incredibly immature regime in the North.”Early in his administration, Bush named North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, in his “axis of evil.” Yet, he has focused most of his attention on the later two nations, even though Pyongyang claims it already has nuclear weapons.“The American officials have said that if the North Koreans proceed with a test, there are going to be consequences,” said Robert Einhorn, former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation in the Clinton administration and chief U.S. negotiator with North Korea from 1996 to 2000. “If there aren’t consequences, the Bush administration is going to look like a paper tiger,” said Einhorn, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

White House Won’t Allow Pyongyang’s Missile Test to Become American-North Korea Issue

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