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An increasing number of American political leaders oppose U.S. President George W. Bush's plan to strike North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. In the latest move, Brad Sherman, chairman of the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, submitted a bill to Congress raising the bar for North Korea¡¯s removal from the list.
The bill is also sponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a ranking Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee and requires North Korea to make a complete and verifiable declaration of all its nuclear programs and stockpiles, including the nuclear weapons the North is refusing to list.
North Korea's recent nuclear declaration also makes no reference to alleged nuclear proliferation including to Syria, and its uranium enrichment program.
If Congress passes the Sherman bill by Aug. 11, when the Bush administration wants to strike the North from the list, it could delay the process indefinitely. In a statement, a council for U.S. servicemen killed or missing in action reiterated the importance of linking the removal of the North from the terrorism list with the issue of locating American soldiers missing in action and POWs missing during the Korean War, as well as with Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s.
In a column Tuesday, Melanie Kirkpatrick in the Wall Street Journal recalls that North Korea was placed on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism after bombing Korean Air Flight 858 off the coast of Burma in 1987. Bush's decision to remove it is ¡°a coup for Pyongyang, which can now lay claim to the mantle of being of a higher moral order than Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba, its former companions on the list."
In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies the same day, U.S. chief nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said the partial declaration of its nuclear stockpiles ¡°is not the final step." He defended Bush's policy saying, "I assure you that we are not interested in partial denuclearization. We are looking for complete denuclearization."
Hill also offered assurances that South Korea will not be bypassed in the six-party denuclearization process. "With regard to South Korea, I think the North Koreans are obviously registering their dissatisfaction with the outcome of the elections in South Korea and the emergence of President Lee Myung-bak... They, I think, are trying to sort of impede North-South relations in a way that I don¡¯t think is really in their interest now."
He added his government has ¡°made very clear to the North Koreans that just as with the Japanese, North Korea needs to reach out and respond on North-South initiatives. And so we have made that clear to the North Koreans... We¡¯ve always coordinated with the South Koreans whenever we have bilateral meetings."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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