Bush Wrong On N. Korea, House Republican Charges

President Bush is wrong to begin dropping sanctions against North Korea over that nation's nuclear programs, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says.

Bush began lifting some trade actions against the rogue nation after it turned over a document on its nuclear activities. Seven years ago, Bush had included North Korea in his "Axis of Evil."

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, today expressed "profound disappointment" over the Bush administration's decision to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The administration would have shown more caution and less haste, Ros-Lehtinen says.

"Even while negotiating the agreement announced today, Pyongyang continued to brazenly assist another state sponsor of terrorism, Syria, in the development of an illicit nuclear program until an Israeli air strike destroyed the facility in the Syrian desert last September," Ros-Lehtinen says. "While the regime in Pyongyang has declared its intention to disable its nuclear reactor, questions remain as to whether the North Koreans will be fulfilling their full denuclearization obligations. By the Administration's own admission, as articulated by Secretary [Condolezza] Rice in an editorial published today: 'It may be the case that North Korea does not want to give up its nuclear weapons and programs. That is a real possibility.'

The Administration is rushing to reward North Korea by lifting the terrorism designation and removing a number of sanctions related to this designation, Ros-Lehtinen charges.

"We have yet to determine if the declaration is complete and verifiable but are relinquishing one of the most valuable instruments of leverage available to the U.S. The forthcoming demolition of a nuclear cooling tower this weekend is little more than the destruction of an empty shell," she says. "The ramifications of the Administration's request are far-reaching. In rewarding North Korea this way, we risk abandoning true and steadfast allies like Japan and we send a message to the regimes in Damascus and Tehran that the United States will endorse a reckless disregard of our own interests."

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