U.S. shows a new willingness to engage 'axis of evil'

[maddezmom]

WASHINGTON: When the U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, meets her North Korean counterpart, Pak Ui Chun, in Singapore this week, it will be the first substantive high-level meeting between Washington and the North since Madeleine Albright visited Kim Jong Il during the waning months of the Clinton administration.

After a weekend in which the Bush administration sent a top U.S. State Department official to a meeting in Geneva with an Iranian official, the North Korea meeting may well amount to last rites for the "axis of evil," the one that President George W. Bush said in 2002 was "arming to threaten the peace of the world."

The Bush administration began long ago to step down from its vow not to talk to America's foes. But its recent concessions to Iran and North Korea - and to Iraq, another charter member of the axis - have further muddled the message.

Bush has now agreed, in principle, to the idea of a timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq, something he has long derided as dangerous.

more:http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/22/america/diplo.php