McCain could be tougher than Bush with NKorea

WASHINGTON — North Korea's pledge to restart its nuclear reactor puts fresh focus on one of the most vexing issues of the Bush presidency.

With efforts to rid the communist nation of its nuclear weapons certain to carry over to his successor, it is Democrat Barack Obama who is likely to follow Bush's approach more closely than GOP nominee John McCain.

Like Bush, Obama has favored multinational talks. McCain has cast doubt on whether they can succeed; he could bring a tougher tone to the often deadlocked talks.

"More than Obama, McCain would rely on pressure"_ including the application of U.N. resolutions _ "to augment, not replace, diplomacy," said Bruce Klingner, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation who is not affiliated with either campaign. McCain favors engagement over isolation, he said, but sees in the Bush approach "an overeagerness to reach an agreement at all costs."

North Korea said Friday it is making "thorough preparations" to restart its nuclear reactor and accused the U.S. of failing to fulfill its obligations under an international disarmament-for-aid agreement.

Obama has supported discussions with North Korea. Early in the presidential campaign, Obama said he would be willing to meet, without precondition, with North Korea's leader. His campaign later said such a meeting would come only after diplomatic spadework.

Hazel Smith, a professor at Britain's University of Warwick who spent nearly two years working for the United Nations in North Korea, recently wrote that Obama seems to have fewer problems with adopting a Republican policy. "Ironically, it is Senator McCain who may likely want to repudiate the Bush administration's success in foreign policy," she said.

McCain has questioned North Korea's commitment "to verifiable denuclearization" and aligned himself with conservatives wary of a February 2007 nuclear deal with the North.

He also strongly criticized the Clinton administration's 1994 deal where the North was to have received two light-water reactors in return for freezing its nuclear facilities. That accord fell apart in 2002, Bush's second year in office, after the United States claimed North Korea had embarked on a secret highly enriched uranium program.

Robert Gallucci, dean of Georgetown University's school of foreign service, was the lead U.S. negotiator in the 1994 agreement and now is an Obama adviser. He said he worried that McCain's skeptical "instincts" about the North would lead him to reject negotiation for "a much tougher, provocative approach, which I don't think will produce the outcome we want and runs the risk of another military engagement."

Bush took an initial hard line, grouping North Korea in an "axis of evil" with Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. After a 2006 North Korean nuclear test, the Bush administration turned to engagement.

Some conservatives who once cheered Bush's position on North Korea say the administration has since been quick to accommodate the North's demands when nuclear talks have become deadlocked. They strongly criticized Bush's decision to begin the process of removing Kim Jong Il's communist-led government from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terror after North Korea handed over its nuclear declaration.

The North has long coveted that, but the administration is refusing to finalize the move until Pyongyang agrees on a method for the West to verify the nuclear declaration.