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Hoekstra Responds to Breakdown of Talks on North Korean Nuclear Program
Washington,
Dec 12, 2008 -
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., issued the following statement in response to the breakdown of talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.
“North Korea’s refusal this week to agree to a plan to verify the Six Party Talks denuclearization agreement is the culmination of a series of errors by the Bush Administration on North Korea. The only bright spot in this saga is that North Korea’s recalcitrance may have saved the Bush Administration from itself.
“I strongly disagreed with the Bush Administration’s decision on October 11, 2008 to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terror without the Pyongyang Government agreeing to come clean on its entire nuclear program, nuclear proliferation -- to include its possible assistance to the Syrian nuclear reactor at al Kibar, and fully answer questions about its kidnapping of South Korean and Japanese citizens. The Bush Administration assured Congress that the verification issue would be resolved quickly and the other issues would be addressed over time.
“North Korea has shown no interest in resolving any of these issues. It received everything it wanted -- food, fuel aid and removal from the U.S. state sponsors of terror list -- but gave us nothing in return. Nevertheless, desperate to get a diplomatic agreement with North Korea before it leaves office, the Bush Administration pleaded with Pyongyang this week to sign onto a verification agreement that falls far well short of what is required for regional and U.S. security. The verification provisions in this agreement contained so many loopholes that they should never have been supported by the United States.
“It is a sad commentary on this last chapter of Bush Administration foreign policy that our nation has been saved from an abysmal diplomatic agreement only because the Kim Jong-Il regime rejected it. I call on the Obama Administration to take a more responsible approach to North Korea and employ a diplomatic strategy similar to that taken in the 2003 negotiations on Libya’s WMD programs which required that nation to come clean and fully cooperate before the United States agreed to provide it with concrete benefits such as removal from the state sponsors of terror list and normalized relations.”
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