WASHINGTON — A rare foreign policy success for the Bush administration is imploding as North Korea backs away from pledges to abandon nuclear weapons, pretty much as the president’s critics on the right had warned.
Distracted by an economic crisis at home and diplomatic setbacks abroad, President Bush and his top aides are watching the collapse of a painstakingly negotiated process that just months ago seemed on track to produce a major international success.
With time running out on the administration and questions about the health of dictator Kim Jong-Il, North Korea has stopped cooperating with the six-nation effort to rid it of atomic bombs. It is moving to restart a reactor it disabled with great fanfare in June. It has also tested a missile engine in violation of U.N. sanctions, officials say.
On Friday, the State Department all but acknowledged that the prospects for an agreement while Bush is president are dead, although the United States isn’t giving up.
“We’re going to continue to push this process forward and do those things that we believe are responsible acts in the national interest,” said spokesman Sean McCormack. “Then we will be ready to turn over what we hope is a six-party process moving forward, as well as other diplomatic initiatives” to a new administration.
The list of those handovers is growing.
Hopes for even the outlines of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by year’s end are dwindling rapidly, and Iran is continuing its nuclear work in defiance of U.S. and international demands. In addition, the administration is facing challenges in Latin America and from an emboldened Russia flexing its muscles in Georgia.
Some goals had been longshots to begin with, but many had held out hope that a North Korea deal was achievable.
North Korea confirmed for the first time Thursday that it is making “thorough preparations” to restart its Yongbyon nuclear facility because the United States has failed to follow through with promised incentives.
White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said Friday that it’s hard to know whether North Korea’s moves reflect a change of policy, or reflect their pattern of “negotiating, and then trying to provoke, if you will, test, create divisions to see if the six parties are serious in sticking together and sticking by their deals.”
From time to time, the United States has watched as North Korea has negotiated, then has stepped out.
“They’re obstructionists,” Hadley said during a briefing with reporters on Bush’s trip this coming week to the United Nations. “They try to divide, and if we stand firm, they come back into a negotiating cycle.”
