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Editorials
Monday, February 26, 2001Threats by N. Korea
should be taken calmlyThe issue: North Korea threatened to end a moratorium on long-range missile tests.
NORTH Korea is back to its old tricks of saber-rattling. To its credit, the Bush administration is taking the bluster calmly, refusing to be intimidated. The proper stance on North Korea is a combination of patience and firmness.
The Communist regime warned that it might end a moratorium on long-range missile tests to protest what it described as a "hard-line" policy by the new administration in Washington.
North Korea also complained that the United States had not upheld its end of a 1994 agreement under which Pyongyang froze its nuclear weapons program -- and threatened to cancel that pact, too.
The angry statement from the North's foreign ministry followed comments by senior Bush administration officials that they expected reciprocity from Pyongyang in dealings between the two countries.
Koreans on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone interpreted those remarks as an indication that Washington might take a tougher approach toward Pyongyang than the Clinton administration.
However, calling for reciprocity hardly seems provocative. North Korea has had success in obtaining concessions -- particularly from the Clinton administration -- after threatening to renege on national arms control agreements and other commitments, but that game has its limits.
After test-firing a rocket that flew over Japan in 1998, North Korea agreed to suspend missile tests in September 1999 as long as talks continued with Washington on resolving concerns over Pyongyang's missile program. In turn, the United States eased some sanctions.
In response to the Pyongyang threat, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said North Korean talk of ending its suspension of missile tests was unhelpful and "counterproductive."
Rice commented, "We have said that we are very concerned about the proliferation of missile technology that is coming out of North Korea and about the North Korean indigenous program. If that's a hard-line position, then so be it."
Rice pointed out that North Korea is the country the United States cites most often when it says it needs a missile defense system to protect itself against attacks by small, unpredictable countries.
"So it's not helpful for the North Koreans to threaten to have missile tests in order to get us to... give up missile defense. That's actually counterproductive," she explained.
The State Department took a more conciliatory stance, trying to reassure Pyongyang that the U.S. would abide by the 1994 nuclear agreement and that it wanted to build on progress toward reconciliation made under the Clinton administration.
It appears that the new administration hasn't decided how it wants to proceed in dealings with North Korea. A return to the old all-out hostility is highly unlikely.
But Pyongyang has to learn that it must fulfill its commitments and abandon its tired tactic of threatening to scrap those commitments when demanding additional concessions. Blunt talk by the new administration may be useful.
Election flaws
EVERYBODY knows that the presidential election was badly handled in Florida. The reason, of course, is that Florida had the misfortune of casting the decisive electoral votes, so every flaw in the system came under national scrutiny during the five weeks it took to decide who won.
But does anyone suppose that the elections in other states were flawless -- or even much better than Florida's? It's likely that every state could find ways to improve, some more than others, of course.
Take Missouri. In St. Louis, attention is focused on a lawsuit that was filed by the national Democratic Party on Election Day to keep the polls open for three hours past the 7 p.m. closing time prescribed by law. The Democrats convinced the judge, but a state appeals court overruled the order at 7:45 p.m.
A report compiled by local attorneys and related by the Wall Street Journal said the lead plaintiff in the suit, named Robert D. Odom, claimed he had been denied the right to vote. However, it was learned that Odom had died in 1999.
Then the Democrats said the real plaintiff was Robert M. Odom, who happened to be an aide to a Democratic legislator. It was learned that this Odom had voted early in the day, but the Democrats' lawyer didn't bother to modify the lawsuit or notify the judge when he learned about it.
Missouri Sen. Kit Bond called the lawsuit a premeditated attempt to "hijack the election." He cited media reports that voters got pre-recorded phone messages from Jesse Jackson informing them that they could vote late. Al Gore phoned a radio talk show to announce that the polls would stay open.
Bond said the narrow losses of John Ashcroft for senator and Jim Talent for governor constituted "a mess on the scale of Florida."
In the election this month for mayor of St. Louis, an investigation found that nearly all 3,000 registrations dropped off by one person on the deadline for registering were fraudulent. A grand jury has been convened in the case.
No, Florida was not alone. There is plenty of blame to go around. Even Hawaii had its problems with ineligible voters, and maybe some things we don't know about yet.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
Frank Bridgewater, Acting Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
