North Korea: The little kid that thinks he's a bully

From the Associated Press:

North Korea has demanded bilateral talks with the United States to defuse the tension created by its announcement that it is a nuclear power, the communist state's U.N. envoy said in a South Korean newspaper Friday.

Han Sung Ryol, a senior diplomat from the U.N. delegation in New York, was the first North Korean official to speak to outside news media since Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry defied the United States and its allies by declaring Thursday it has nuclear weapons.

In the announcement - its first public disclosure that it has the weapons - North Korea said its arsenal is a deterrent against a U.S. invasion, and it does not intend to join six-nation disarmament talks anytime soon. The weapons claim could not be independently verified.

"We will return to the six-nation talks when we see a reason to do so and the conditions are ripe," Han told Seoul's Hankyoreh newspaper in an interview published Friday. "If the United States moves to have direct dialogue with us, we can take that as a signal that the United States is changing its hostile policy toward us."

Do these guys understand that Bill Clinton is no longer president? It doesn't sound like they do. I keep hearing the talking heads say that Bush, with mandate, and no re-election to worry about, is more focused on leaving the world a better place than getting good press. The North Koreans are not that good with timing. Their economy is in the tank, and have been depending on the good graces of the very nations they are now trying to bully. Stoooopid.

Posted by Jack Lewis at February 11, 2005 04:20 PM