President Bush said Wednesday that while North Korea failed to complete a long-range missile launch on Tuesday, it succeeded in hardening world opinion against Pyongyang.
“They’ve isolated themselves further, and that’s sad for the people of North Korea,” Bush told reporters in the Oval Office.
In defiance of the international community, North Korea tried to test-launch a long-range Taepodong-2 missile on Tuesday, but the missile tumbled into the Sea of Japan after less than a minute in the air. The regime also fired half a dozen lesser missiles Tuesday and Wednesday.
Although the administration called the launches “provocative,” it sought to avoid being drawn into an overreaction. So Bush was cautious in his response and made clear that North Korea’s communist dictator, Kim Jong-Il, had defied the world, not just the U.S.
Consequently, the president ruled out any direct talks with North Korea and said he would continue trying to restart six-party talks, which include South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.
“The best way to solve this problem diplomatically is for there to be more than one nation speaking to North Korea, more than America voicing our opinions,” Bush said.
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was more blunt.
“If it was the desire of Kim Jong-Il to turn this into a two-party negotiation or standoff between the United States and North Korea, he blew it,” Snow told reporters.
In fact, Japan took the lead by calling for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, where member nations were unanimous in their disapproval of North Korea’s actions.
Japan has also taken unilaterally actions against Pyongyang.
“The government has announced a series of measures against North Korea, such as a ban on the entry of North Korean ships into Japanese ports and a ban on travels of officials of North Korea to Japan,” said Kenzo Oshima, Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned of broader sanctions. “The international community does have at its disposal a number of tools to make it more difficult for North Korea to engage in this kind of brinksmanship,” she said.
John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said North Korea’s launch of missiles validated Bush’s long-standing support for a “missile defense system to guard against attacks from rogue states and accidental launches.”
Asked what the U.S. should be doing in response to the missile launches, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., told CBS: “Exactly what the president is doing: not overreact[ing].”
Snow, who sarcastically referred to Kim as “dear leader,” sought to prevent U.S. rhetoric over the incident from becoming overheated. “There are attempts to try to describe this almost in breathless World War III terms,” he said. “This is not such a situation.”
