February 4, 2003: Bush Bans Officials from Discussing Negotiations with North Korea

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage tells Congress that the Bush administration will engage in diplomatic negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions (see Mid-January 2003). “Of course we’re going to have direct talks with the North Koreans,” he says, the only question is when and how. President Bush repudiates Armitage’s statement, reportedly becoming so furious that he bans his staff from discussing the entire subject of bilateral talks in public. The administration’s policy continues to be a direct refusal to talk to North Korea. Its explanation: the Clinton administration had negotiated the Agreed Framework with the North Koreans (see October 21, 1994), and that agreement had failed. The Framework had actually been negotiated through the efforts of South Korea and Japan along with the US, and for almost nine years has succeeded in stopping North Korea’s plutonium weapons program from developing, the entire point of the agreement (see December 12, 2002). However, a North Korean uranium bomb project is progressing (see June 2002). In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write: “[T]he administration’s disinclination to engage in bilateral talks seemed more morally than tactically motivated. Conservatives within the administration had realized that, while they could not stop any and all talks with the North, they could prevent bilateral talks and, just as important, they could restrict the latitude given to American negotiators—again, much as [neoconservative defense official Richard] Perle had done during the Reagan administration (see September 1981 through November 1983 and October 11-12, 1986)—so that little or no progress would be made.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 240]