North Korea: another mistake in the US foreign policy toblame?

January 14, 2003 

Albright critical of Bush strategy

From Elaine Monaghan in Washington

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, the only US Secretary of State to have visited
Pyongyang, has criticised the Bush Administration's handling of North
Korea's nuclear brinksmanship. 


Her Republican successors had squandered their inheritance from the
Clinton Administration and unwisely depicted North Korea as a member of
an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq, she told The Times. Dr Albright
did welcome the recent shift towards talks. 


Having spent six hours in the North Korean leader's presence, she
described Kim Jong Il as isolated, but not uninformed. "I don't think
he's a nut," she said. "But if you live in an isolated cult of
personality . . . filled with paranoia that the United States is going
to attack you, it's very hard (for the US) to predict what the reaction
will be. 


"So I think just leaving him alone is not an option." 


She had long worried about the impact of President Bush's 2002 State of
the Union address, in which he accused Iran, Iraq and North Korea of
arming themselves to threaten world peace and said that they could
"attempt to blackmail the United States". 


The speech was "a mistake", Dr Albright said, suggesting that it had
justified North Korean claims that the US posed a threat. 


Of Mr Bush's ruling out of military action, she said: "I think the mixed
signals have confused everything. A dictator does not understand that
our policy comes in four-year chunks."