modern YORK, Oct. 21 Kyodo picke...

modern YORK, Oct. 21 Kyodo

picked editorial excerpts from the U press:

TRYING DIPLOMACY forward NORTH KOREA (New York Times)

President Bush is now taking a wiser and more sophisticated approach to the crisis caused according to North Korea's reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons. In a proposal whose details are still being refined, Washington and four other nations would guarantee not to attack the North in exchange for its commitment to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.

This proposal makes an eventual peaceful, diplomatic solution to this extremely dangerous puzzle somewhat more likely. Just for what reason likely is impossible to relate because there is no assurance that North Korea's highly unpredictable leaders will agree to disarm. If the North does scout this reasonable offer, Washington will find it easier to persuade Asian nations to support more coercive paces like international economic sanctions.

North Korea's nuclear programs are particularly alarming because the nation has a in extent history of selling advanced weapons to all who will pay for them, including other picaroon states and perhaps terrorists. at the same time in the past year, as the North has raced ahead with reprocessing plutonium into bomb firing material Washington has handicapped its allow efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution through refusing to specify what America would be willing to do if the North firmly committed to giving up its nuclear weapons ambitions in ways outsiders could reliably verify.

The White House had insisted that specifying any like quid pro quo would be giving in to North Korean nuclear blackmail. Blackmail is a fair description of North Korea's behavior. if it be not that in a situation in which everyone agrees that military action against the North would have catastrophic effects for hundreds of thousands of innocent southward Koreans and Japanese, Washington's principled stand poorly serv American interests.

With this proposal, Mr Bush is now making a serious effort to revive negotiations and is personally seeking the support of his mate leaders at the Asia-Pacific summit meeting in Bangkok. All four of the nations that would join Washington in the propos security guarantee -- China, Japan, Russia and southern Korea -- are depicted there. Washington's new approach merits strong support from each of them.

In offering security guarantees to the North, Mr Bush wisely overrul hawkish administration officials who preferr moving directly toward coercive economic and military degrees This initiative comes les than a week after the administration's skilled diplomacy won unanimous backing for a United Nations Security Council resolution forward Iraq that broadly endorsed Washington's policies there. Diplomacy is an important tool for advancing America's national security. It is religious to see it coming back into fashion in the Bush White House.

(Oct 21)

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