Some leading US Democratic senators joined a growing chorus of voices calling on the Bush administration on Wednesday to engage in bilateral talks with North Korea to persuade the communist state to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.
Carl Levin, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said President George W Bush should abandon his resistance to one-on-one talks with North Korea and appoint a special envoy to deal with Pyongyang. "Providing our allies and partners want us to talk with the North Koreans, bilaterally, one-on-one, we should do so," he said, adding that he believed South Korea, China and Russia supported such talks. "Our refusal to do so just plays into the hands of the North Koreans," Levin said. |