Nunn: U.S. too rigid on N. Korea

[RamblingRose]

Nunn: U.S. too rigid on N. Korea

By GREG BLUESTEIN
Associated Press
Published on: 10/18/06
Athens — Former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn called Tuesday for direct talks between the United States and North Korea after the Asian nation stunned the world last week by conducting a nuclear test.

Nunn called the Bush administration's reluctance to meet with the North "counterproductive."

"We talked to our adversaries during the worst parts of the Cold War," said Nunn, a Georgia Democrat and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Who knows what catastrophes we prevented? But I do know one thing: When you do not communicate with your adversaries and when you know that war is going to be devastating when it comes, it is a mistake to leave any ambiguity in our policy. Those ambiguities can only be removed by frank and candid dialogue."

The United States has resisted direct talks with the North, opting instead for six-party talks — including South Korea, Japan, China and Russia — aimed at getting the North to dismantle its weapons program, sign the international nuclear test ban treaty and permit U.N. nuclear inspections. North Korea has shown no signs of cooperating. It blasted U.N. sanctions passed in response to the nuclear test and said the measures amount to a declaration of war.

Nunn, an expert on nuclear proliferation who co-founded the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative after leaving office in 1996, said the North's threat means the United States must once again prove its Cold War commitment to defending Japan and South Korea, which have never developed nuclear arms programs of their own.

"These two nations and their citizens must be reassured that they remain under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and that we will regard an attack from North Korea against South Korea and Japan as an attack against the United States," Nunn said.

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"We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe," Nunn said. "And at the moment, the outcome is unclear."

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/10/17/1018nunn.html