Critics question tough talk on Iran, North Korea
Barbara Slavin USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- In singling out North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an ''axis of evil,'' President Bush appears to be extending his war on terrorism to countries that are developing arms of mass destruction
Foreign policy analysts say none of those countries cited by Bush in his State of the Union address Tuesday night has been linked to recent terrorist attacks against the United States. But all three are believed to be seeking nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Few experts disagree with Bush's description of Iraq's regime as ''evil,'' but some say he erred by lumping in North Korea and Iran.
''This could create a much more difficult situation with Iran and close out options opened by the Clinton administration with North Korea,'' says Tony Cordesman, an arms expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
''The president is edging close to a new doctrine of pre-emption'' of proliferation threats, adds Lee Feinstein, an arms control expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ''I agree you don't have to wait to be hit to take action. But these are three very different countries here.''
Bush said Iran, Iraq or North Korea might arm terrorists, attack U.S. allies or attempt to ''blackmail'' the United States. All three countries rejected those charges.
A State Department official said Wednesday that the administration is still seeking talks with North Korea and Iran. He said Bush's remarks were meant to increase pressure on them to abandon weapons programs and -- in North Korea's case -- permit full inspection of its nuclear facilities. But critics say Bush's tough rhetoric might rally Iranians against the United States and encourage North Korea to refuse to talk.
All three countries are on a State Department list of terrorist sponsors. But they also differ:
* Iraq. Eleven years after being driven from Kuwait, Iraq still has not complied with United Nations resolutions demanding that it disclose all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles. No U.N. arms inspectors have been allowed in the country for three years, and there are concerns that the regime of Saddam Hussein is secretly developing nuclear weapons. In the 1980s, Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds.
* North Korea. The world's last Stalinist nation continues to arm itself even as 10% of its 22 million people may have died of starvation. Unlike Iraq or Iran, the regime signed an agreement with the United States in 1994 to abandon a nuclear weapons program, but some Bush administration officials are skeptical that it has kept its word. North Korea also agreed to suspend long-range missile tests, and it was negotiating an accord to halt missile exports as the Clinton administration ended.
Han Park, director of the Center for the Study of Global Issues at the University of Georgia, says Bush's remarks undercut South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's ''sunshine policy'' of engagement with the North before Bush visits Seoul.
* Iran. Some Iranian leaders and many ordinary citizens favor reopening ties broken two decades ago after Iran seized hostages at the U.S. Embassy. But the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, backs Palestinian and Lebanese groups that Bush also singled out as terrorists Tuesday.
Israel's seizure this month of a shipload of Iranian weapons bound for Palestinians set back chances for a U.S.-Iranian reconciliation based on a post-Sept. 11 alliance against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The administration also has been rankled by allegations that Iran allowed al-Qaeda terrorists to escape and is arming rivals of the interim Afghan government, which Washington supports.
''It's hard to understand how you can cooperate on Afghanistan and at the same time be so explosively involved in the question of the Palestinians and Israel,'' Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Wednesday. ''You can't be occasionally a good citizen.''
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser, said U.S. allies might reject Bush's expanded target list.
Bush didn't mention Libya, Sudan, Cuba or Syria -- the other countries on the U.S. list of terrorist sponsors. U.S. relations with the first two are improving, Cuba is not considered a threat, and some call Syria crucial for Middle East peace.
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I think that what Bush is doing is terribly unintelligent, this are the kind of things that happen when you put Forrest Gump in the place of the most powerful man on earth.
Maybe iam ingenuous, but i think that at least with North Korea and Iran the USA will be able to achive more things through negotiations than weapons.
Why is cuba considered as a terroist sponsor country?