Levin and Clinton Urge President to Develop Coordinated Strategy to Address North Korea’s Nuclear and Missile Threat

WASHINGTON – In light of recent news reports that North Korea is making preparations that are consistent with a test launch of an intercontinental missile, Senators Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., wrote [PDF] to President Bush urging him to “develop a single, coordinated Presidential strategy to diplomatically address North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat.” The senators also urged the President to appoint a senior Presidential envoy to implement the strategy and to keep Congress and the American people fully informed of North Korea’s activities.

“[W]e may be approaching the nightmare scenario in which our only option is to negotiate with a North Korea that can attack the United States with a nuclear weapon instead of a North Korea that is still working towards that capability,” the senators wrote to the President. “While North Korea continues to develop its ability to attack the United States, our negotiating leverage decreases. After three largely fruitless years of the Six-Party Talks, time is increasingly of the essence.”

Read the letter from Senators Levin and Clinton to President Bush. [PDF]