U.S. Refuses One-On-One North Korea Talks

Arguing it was burned before in one-on-one talks with North Korea, the United States said Friday it had no interest in resuming direct discussions on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

The White House said it continued to support a six-nation process designed to negotiate the elimination of the communist country's nuclear armaments.

But with that process stalled, administration officials were beginning to discuss the possibility of referring the issue to the U.N. Security Council as an alternate approach.

The objective there would be to impose international sanctions to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his weapons program.

WTF?

Kim wants bilateral. Bush wants six-ulateral. Nobody blinks, nobody talks. A splendid start to Condi's resurrection of diplomacy.

So here's U.S. proliferation policy in a nutshell: if you don't have nukes, but the Neocons see the mark of the devil on you, we attack and invade you unilaterally. We claim the U.N. is useless, archaic, inept, toothless.

If you do have da bomb, the U.N. is magically rehabilitated, and the U.S. finds religion in equivocation, stalling and de-emphasis.

Sounds like a pretty powerful incentive to develop WMDs, eh?