Seeking a Coherent North Korea Policy

Friday, October 13, 2006

By E.D. Hill, Fox News Live

October 12, 2006

Appearing on Fox News Live, CNP President Tim Roemer discusses how to move forward on North Korea.

[Segment joined in progress.]

Tim Roemer: … it’s part of the axis of evil. We have more problems here. The president has talked about this axis of evil, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and they seem to be getting stronger not weaker. I think the talk out of the United Nations is beginning to go in the right direction but it needs to entail probably a three-tiered policy. One- we have to have tough sanctions. We have to make sure that North Korea, which has been the peddler of all sorts of weapons in the past, cannot sell this to the world market and cannot sell this to a potential terrorist organization. Two-

E.D. Hill: - Let me stop you there, let’s start with the first one. China and Russia say no, we aren’t going along with sanctions. What do we do?

Roemer: I think we have to continue to be very tough on this particular point.

Hill: How?

Roemer: I think we have to work with other countries. The United States has to continue to work with China, South Korea, Japan, and be willing to bilaterally talk to North Korea. I think the second point to this--

Hill: --hold on, let me just go back to this because everybody keeps on saying this and I can’t find out what they mean by this because China and Russia over and over again say, we’re not going along with sanctions, so that really leaves it up- so do you suggest then that we get together with Germany and Japan and South Korea and simply do something about it ourselves and forget about working with China and Russia because they haven’t indicated, they will not go along with these things.

Roemer: Well the first thing that has to take place is the Bush administration has to have a coherent policy. They have to decide together that they can’t take their eye off the ball on this situation, ignore it, or have two different policies at the same time.

We have to have a multi-tiered, layered approach to this. It has to be tough sanctions, it also has to be involvement of China and Russia, we have to make sure we cooperate with the Japanese and the South Koreans on a theater defense to make sure nothing happens to one of our allies. That multi-layered approach I think E.D., gives us a much better chance than the failed policy the Bush people have approached so far.

Hill: Ok. If we do anything militarily as you were suggesting in the third part of that where we work together with South Korea and with Japan, here’s what the North Koreans say: any sanctions first off will be a declaration of war and they will take physical steps to deal with it and that if the U.S. takes a hostile, and I guarantee they are going to consider it a hostile attitude if we start talking about a military defense system they’re going to take some sort of action. What do we do?

Roemer: The North Koreans believe even sanctions are a declaration of war. I think the United States has it under our obligation to defend our country, to work with other allies in the region, to ignore that blatant kind of statement. Even the Chinese said when the North Koreans were testing this kind of weapon, or trying to test this kind of weapon, they used flagrant, they used blatant disregard for the international community. I think the Chinese and the Russians are at a position to eventually agree both to sanctions and hopefully some kind of Chapter 7 language that would come out of the U.N. as military as a last resort.

But we also have to talk to these countries. E.D., the Bush administration has failed to talk to Syria, talk to North Korea in a bilateral way. I think we have to be able to use our diplomatic skills and all the levers of power in the U.S. diplomatic arsenal here.

Hill: Representative Roemer, than you very much for being here.

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