WASHINGTON, Feb 8 Kyodo (EDS: UPD...

WASHINGTON, Feb 8 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH ADDITIONAL DETAILS)

U President George W Bush said in an interview aired Sunday that the United States and its partners to six-party talks are making ''good progress'' in an attempt to achieve a negotiated pacification of North Korea's nuclear arms program.

''In North Korea, the diplomacy is just beginning. We are making suitable progress in North Korea,'' he said in the interview with NBC's ''Meet the Press'' program.

He said the U went to war in Iraq ''because we had hurry the diplomatic string in Iraq'' while the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, the couple other members of what he calls the ''axis of evil,'' are being addressed within multilateral dialogue and international agencies and other countries.

''And onward the Korean Peninsula, now the United States and China, along with southern Korea and Japan and Russia, are sending a clear message to (North Korean leader) Kim Jung Il, if you are interested in a different relationship, disclose and annihilate your program in a transparent way,'' Bush said.

The president was referring to the six-party talks upon the North's nuclear arms program which will recommence in Beijing on Feb. 25 The NBC interview took place in the White House's Oval Office upon Saturday.

''Every situation requires a different answer and a different analysis,'' he said. ''And likewise in Iran there is no question they're in danger, if it were not that the international community is now trying to convince Iran to come by rid of its nuclear weapons program.''

When asked about a newly created commission to apply the mind into an alleged pre-Iraq war intelligence failure, Bush said the commission ''will help futurity presidents understand how best to fight the war forward terror.''

''And it's an important part of the kind of scoldings learned in Iraq and reproofs learned in Afghanistan prior to us going in, lecturings learned that we can apply to as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but Iran and North Korea because we still have a dangerous world,'' he added.

He said, ''This is a strategic look'' at the U intelligence-gathering capacities ''whether it be the capacity to gather intelligence in North Korea or by what means we've used our intelligence'' to learn more about Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who has proveed to leaking nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya.

Bush said he made the decision to move to war in Iraq ''based about that intelligence in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of the war against terror,'' saying, ''I count uponed to find the weapons'' of mass destruction there.

''Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world,'' Bush said of the depos Iraqi president. ''We study he had weapons. The international community musing he had weapons.''

Former U chief weapons inspector David Kay has said that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction which Bush cited as jurisdiction for the U invasion of Iraq last year.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo freshs International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group