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Officials should not shun
Hawaii meeting

THE ISSUE Some of the nation's county officials are being criticized for planning to attend next month's convention in Honolulu.

FOR a glimpse of 4,000 profiles in courage, one will only have to visit the National Association of Counties' annual meeting next month at the Hawaii Convention Center. They are the county officials who will have withstood frenzied pressure from constituents unable to imagine business being conducted in paradise.

Commissioner Steve Arnold of Guilford County, N.C., told the News and Record of Greensboro, N.C., that attending the convention is "an outrageous extravagance by elected officials who have no concern for the taxpayers." Public officials from Hawaii have attended meetings on the mainland for decades -- the same activity in reverse -- without repercussion.

Tom Ridge took media heat in December when, as homeland security secretary, he attended the annual Asia-Pacific Homeland Security Summit and Exposition in Honolulu. In an Associated Press report this week, Hawaii and Florida were lumped among "exotic foreign capitals and fabulous resort towns with beaches and golf courses" that senators visited last year at the expense of private organizations.

Officials in Alabama, Illinois, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin have knuckled under to the pressure. Convention organizers have equipped convention participants with "helpful reminders" to defend their attendance at the meeting, scheduled July 15-19.

Most people recognize that excluding tourism areas from consideration for business meetings is absurd. The counties' organization understood that seven years ago in selecting Honolulu for the 2005 convention.

"Obviously, Hawaii is a beautiful place and there's somewhat of a perception that Hawaii is a place where people go for vacation rather than a conference ... but our days are nine to five out there," said Jeremy Ratner, an association spokesman.

The challenge continuing to face isle tourism officials is to educate people that Hawaii is both a beautiful place to relax and a well-equipped location to do business.

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U.S. should resume talks
with N. Korea

THE ISSUE Bush administration negotiators have expressed doubts about whether N. Korea will give up its nuclear weapons program.

NORTH Korea told the United States last week that it is willing to return to international talks that were halted a year ago about abandoning its nuclear program. Factions within the Bush administration should resolve their differences and seek a resumption of talks as soon as possible.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the committee's ranking Democrat, have expressed concern about the administration's inconsistency in policy. Some officials talk about "regime change" in North Korea, and others favor diplomacy.

While the administration has debated the issue internally, North Korea has produced enough fissile material to build up to eight nuclear weapons, quadruple that of 2003. Although it might be capable of attaching a nuclear warhead to a long-range missile capable of striking Hawaii or even the mainland, the more realistic concern is that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will peddle surplus nuclear material to terrorists.

That would be Kim's logical response to what looms as a humanitarian crisis in North Korea. Food stocks are becoming depleted, prices have risen, salaries have dropped and the United Nations World Food Program is running out of donations, according to Tony Banbury, the program's regional director for Asia.

That crisis is not likely to faze Kim, who has tolerated famine in the past. For three months this year, Kim essentially cut off food aid by barring the U.N. agency's monitors from entering the country.

A resumption of bilateral talks within a six-nation framework is essential to bring economic or political leverage on North Korea by China and South Korea. If the talks fail, the United States will be unable to seek U.N. sanctions against the North without having exhausted diplomatic efforts.

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