Sunday, July 18, 2004
N Korea is bigger threat than Iraq: Clinton
Reuters Amsterdam, July 17
Former US President Bill Clinton sees North Korea as more of a threat than Iraq was, but thinks another "preemptive" war by the United States is unlikely, he was quoted on Saturday as saying.
Clinton told the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad in an interview that US difficulties in Iraq meant President George W Bush's doctrine of preemptive strikes would not be used against other states like North Korea or Iran, despite the threats they posed.
"North Korea has almost a million people in the army. They have powerful rockets and if we attacked preemptively, they would no longer have a reason not to attack South Korea," Clinton said, according to a Reuters translation from the Dutch.
"There are circumstances under which I would support the president if he attacked North Korea. In Europe, perhaps nobody would do that, but I would," Clinton told the Dutch newspaper during a visit to Amsterdam to promote his memoir "My Life".
"This is the most isolated country on earth, which cannot even feed its own people... this country is under great pressure to sell dangerous weapons to people up to no good." Pyongyang accuses Washington of preparing to attack North Korea despite diplomatic negotiations to try to end a nearly two-year-old impasse over its nuclear weapons programmes.
Clinton said the idea of preemptive strikes, while laudable in principle, had not worked in practice, with neo-conservatives in the Bush administration underestimating how difficult it would be to bring stability and democracy to Iraq.
He noted that Bush was now softening his stance towards Pyongyang after long rejecting the approach Clinton favoured during his presidency, of holding talks or offering incentives to induce the communist state to halt its nuclear programmes.
"They are now almost back to the point where we got to. The Chinese have done the most to keep onto them. The South Koreans too because they want reconciliation. We now just have to go along with them while they do the work. And, if it gets that far, sign the non-aggression pact we want," he said.
Ahead of November's election, Bush has been eager to show progress on North Korea as Democratic challenger John Kerry has used the issue to attack the Republican's foreign policy.
Bush once branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran and pre-war Iraq but last month offered security guarantees and South Korean aid in return for North Korea agreeing to dismantle its nuclear programmes.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.