Bill Clinton: “Well, I don't know that I would characterize it in that way. He called me; we talked about it. I wanted to make sure he…”

“Well, I don't know that I would characterize it in that way. He called me; we talked about it. I wanted to make sure he had adequate briefings. I have always--I have, as you probably know, I have--and I've said this I believe publicly--I have sought other means of personally communicating to Kim Il-song that the desires of the United States and the interests of the United States and the policy of the United States was to pursue a nonnuclear Korean Peninsula and to give North Korea a way of moving with dignity into the international community and away from an isolated path, which we found quite disturbing for all the reasons that I've already said. It seemed to me that when President Carter expressed a willingness to go and they had given him an invitation of some longstanding to come, that that gave us the opportunity to give North Korea a direct message to their leader from a distinguished American citizen, without in any way undermining the necessary and correct government-to-government contacts that we had going on at other levels. President Carter, I think, was very faithful in articulating the policy of our Government. And I think that that provided a forum in which the North Korean leader, Kim Il-song, could respond as he did. And I'm very pleased about it. When we were called last Thursday and this whole issue was discussed and we said what we said about we hope that their message meant that they were willing to freeze their nuclear program, then they said they were. Then we got formal confirmation today of the definition of ``freeze.'' Their definition was the same as ours. We had the basis to go forward. I'm very happy about it. Yes, Wolf [Wolf Blitzer, CNN]. Go ahead.”