The White House pushed back Monday against critics who blamed U.S. foreign policy for North Korea's nuclear test, with spokesman Tony Snow dismissing the complaints as armchair criticism. Snow insisted Washington had been actively engaged on North Korea, Iran, and Iraq through multilateral diplomacy and intended to continue those efforts.
Democratic critics, including former senator Sam Nunn, argued the Bush administration had misjudged its priorities among the three countries it once grouped together as an "axis of evil." North Korea analyst Selig Harrison wrote that U.S. sanctions had strengthened hard-liners in Pyongyang.
Snow also sought to minimize the test itself, noting that Washington had not yet confirmed it involved an actual nuclear weapon and that verification could take considerable time, or might never be fully achieved.
Both Snow and State Department spokesman Sean McCormack ruled out direct bilateral negotiations with Pyongyang, arguing that one-on-one talks would weaken the U.S. position and fracture the coalition backing the six-party process involving China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. McCormack pointed to the Clinton-era agreement with North Korea as evidence that bilateral deals with Pyongyang carry little weight.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in October 2006, in its own words.