Bill Clinton: “Well, first let me say, thank you to the gentleman from Hawaii for the condolences for my mother, and mine to the mother…”

“Well, first let me say, thank you to the gentleman from Hawaii for the condolences for my mother, and mine to the mother of the Governor of Hawaii who passed away today. A wonderful woman. The Korean--let me just tell you, if you follow the press you know that the intelligence reports are divided on the question of how far the North Koreans have gone in developing a nuclear weapon. But everybody knows they are trying to. Even if they develop one, then there's the question of their delivery capacity, which is in doubt. I wouldn't say Hawaii is in serious danger right now. What I would say is that we need to keep working very hard and to be very firm about not wanting Korea to join the family of nuclear states. You know, I've been out here working to reduce the number of countries with nuclear weapons, with Ukraine and Kazakhstan and Belarus committing to get rid of their weapons. We are now involved in intense negotiations, and the only thing I can tell you is we're working as hard as we can to be as firm as we can and then to be as also as firm as we can about the security of our people and the South Koreans in the event all does not go well. But we are working very hard, and I certainly have not given up yet on getting the North Koreans to go back into the NPT system and agreeing to let the International Atomic Energy inspectors in there to look at what they're doing. They ought to do it. The country is so isolated. They're isolated economically. Even China used to be a big ally of theirs. China now does 8 or 10 times as much trade with South Korea as with North Korea. And I think they believe that somehow this gives them some handle on national prestige. I think their best way to be esteemed in the rest of the world is to be a good citizen and give the rest of us a chance to relate to them. Mr. King. Birmingham, Alabama. Hello. Criticism of the President”