Bush Admin Praised for Handling of North Korea Talks

Bush Administration Praised for Handling of North Korea Talks
A former U.S. ambassador who served as special envoy to North Korea in the administration of President Bill Clinton says that while he has been "a very strong critic of the Bush administration" for the last couple of years, he considers the latest round of nuclear related talks with Pyongyang to be "a resounding success."

Jack Pritchard also served for a while as a Clinton holdover in the Bush government. He recently took part in a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution to discuss his optimism over Round Four of the Six-Party Talks involving the North Korean nuclear threat. Besides the U.S. and North Korea, the discussions involve South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.

Pritchard praised the Bush administration for re-evaluating the direction in which it was moving on the North Korean issue and for the appointments of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state and Ambassador Chris Hill "as the head of delegation for the discussions with the North Koreans on the six-party process.

"I think it has been the conduct of Ambassador Hill and what he has been allowed to do that is responsible for this two-week, first-ever negotiations. I do not consider the run-up -- the first three (rounds) -- to have been negotiations. This one was a true set of negotiations," Pritchard told the Brookings audience.

James Walsh, executive director of the Managing Atom Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, agreed with Pritchard's assessment of the meetings. "The most recent round was a success. Rarely has a meeting that produced no agreement won so much praise. But I still think that it is worth praising.

Prior to the talks, Walsh said, there was international skepticism about whether the U.S. was willing to be seriously engaged or "whether it was talk for talk's sake, for diplomatic advantage, what have you, and there were real concerns as to whether the North Koreans were serious.

"And my sense out of this first round is that both parties, both sides, come away from it with the view that there is something serious here."