[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 18]
[Senate]
[Page 23588]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              NORTH KOREA

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I think we all can agree that North 
Korea remains one of the greatest challenges to our country's foreign 
and national security policy, and it is clear that approaches to date 
haven't been successful. This year saw Kim Jong Il launch seven 
ballistic missiles into the sea of Japan and successfully detonate a 
nuclear device, defying the clear will of the international community 
and forcing us to confront the reality of a nuclearized North Korea.
  The Bush administration's policy on North Korea has been a complete 
failure. The 1994 Agreed Framework which this administration inherited 
was not perfect, and the North Koreans cheated by pursuing uranium 
enrichment. But the collapse of the framework, which had kept North 
Korea's fuel rods under IAEA supervision, has been a disaster. As the 
Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet testified publicly in 
2004, ``the IC judged in the mid-1990s that North Korea had produced 
one, possibly two, nuclear weapons. The 8000 rods the North [now] 
claims to have processed into plutonium metal would provide enough 
plutonium for several more.''
  But that is the past; our problem now is to find a way forward. For 
far too many months we have been waiting on the sidelines, hoping, 
passively, that conditions will turn our way. We have been distracted 
by Iraq--it took a series of missile launches and the actual detonation 
of a nuclear device for us to get fully engaged again. And still we 
wait for the Six Party Talks to reconvene.
  I welcome the news that North Korea has agreed to come back to the 
Six Party Talks. That is a good starting point, but it cannot be the 
end point; the Six Party process has dragged on for years now, and the 
only objective result has been that Kim Jong Il now has nuclear 
weapons. There must be results that come from these talks, and we must 
have in place benchmarks for what success means. I hope that we can 
convince Kim Jong Il to give up his nuclear weapons, but history does 
not provide a great deal of reassurance on that score. At a minimum, we 
should seek steps in that direction, such as partial dismantlement or a 
freeze on further production of fissile material, as a starting point.
  Ultimately, North Korea needs to be brought back into the 
international fold. Unfortunately, we can't do that if we signal that 
our true desire is ``regime change'' and we continue to refuse to 
consider other options, such as direct negotiations. When dealing with 
such an important matter to our national security, we should not keep 
any option off the table. It is high time for a change of course in 
President Bush's North Korea policy.

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