Obama to oppose N. Korea's nuclear ambitions just like Bush: White House

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (Yonhap) -- The incoming Barack Obama administration will
oppose North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions just like the outgoing Bush
administration had done, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said Monday.
"I think that the North Koreans will find that they will be just as against North
Korea's nuclear weapons programs as the Bush administration has been," Perio
said, according to AFP.
Perino made the remarks just one day before Bush leaves office at the end of his
eight-year tenure.
On North Korea's repeated threats in recent days to get tough with South Korea's
conservative Lee Myung-bak government, Perino said, "It's not surprising that
they would bang their spoons on their high chair to try to get attention."
North Korea's military issued a rare statement last week to take "an all-out
confrontational posture" against the South to face the hardline policy of Lee,
who has pledged not to engage actively with the North unless Pyongyang abandons
its nuclear ambitions.
The North's move comes amid reports that Obama may sideline the North Korean
issue at the initial stage of his inauguration due mainly to the worsening
economic crisis and other more urgent security issues in the Middle East such as
the wars in Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
North Korea's foreign ministry said recently that it will not abandon its nuclear
arsenal unless the U.S. normalizes ties and abandons its hostile North Korea
policy.
The latest round of the six-party talks failed to produce an agreement on how to
verify the North's nuclear facilities, spawning concerns that North Korea is not
serious about the multilateral nuclear disarmament talks that began in 2003.
Obama has said he will continue the six-party talks while seeking more direct
engagement with North Korea, including a possible one-on-one meeting with North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il without preconditions.
Obama's choice for the top U.S. diplomat, Sen. Hillary Clinton, told a Senate
confirmaton hearing last week that she would engage North Korea directly as well
as by way of the six-party talks to address its alleged uranium-based nuclear
program and suspected nuclear proliferation.
She said the Obama administration will use "smart power," a combination of
diplomacy and military force, to address North Korea and other security issues.
"Smart power requires reaching out to both friends and adversaries, to bolster
old alliances and to forge new ones," she said.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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