Former President Clinton said Wednesday efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions have been hampered by President Bush’s own push for development of nuclear weapons.
“Our position has been weakened,” Clinton said in a speech at Georgetown University. “The administration has asked for funds to research the development of two new nuclear weapons.”
Clinton said this stance “has caused us a lot of problems.” Last week, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test by detonating a weapon underground.
“There is this sense that the world is divided between the good guys and the bad guys, and the good guys should have their nuclear weapons and the bad guys shouldn’t,” Clintonsaid. “It is very hard to say there’s going to be one set of rules for me and another set for everyone else.”
The remarks came one week after Bush alluded to the failure of Clinton’s 1994 bilateral negotiations with North Korea, which ended up breaking its promise to halt weapons programs. Bush is now committed to six-party talks with North Korea that include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
“Bilateral negotiations didn’t work,” Bush said at a news conference without mentioning Clinton by name. “I appreciate the efforts of previous administrations. It just didn’t work.”
He added: “This is a serious issue. But I want to remind our fellow citizens that the North Korea issue was serious for years.”
Clinton is the second Democratic ex-president to blast Bush’s North Korea policy since last week’s nuclear test. On Tuesday, Bush was criticized by former President Jimmy Carter who had helped broker the Clinton deal with Pyongyang.
“All of that has been thrown in the wastebasket,” Carter said in Atlanta during a panel discussion on the agreement.
Carter complained that “there was a rapid change in the attitude toward North Korea,” after Bush took office. “Within a year, the entire framework was destroyed, and North Korea was branded a member of the axis of evil.”
Last week, Carter wrote a column for The New York Times that called on Bush to revert to bilateral talks with North Korea.
“I just disagree with him,” Bush told Fox News Channel on Monday. “Since that didn’t work, we ought to try another way forward.”
