John Kerry: “I would like to both agree and disagree with my friend from South Dakota. I clearly want to agree with him about our…”

“I would like to both agree and disagree with my friend from South Dakota. I clearly want to agree with him about our concern on the issue of proliferation. There are many in the U.S. Senate who have worked throughout their careers in the Senate in an effort to try to augment the United States focus on proliferation issues. I disagree with my colleague very strongly on his interpretation of this administration and on his fairly strong condemnation of the administration's efforts with respect to this. I would remind my colleague that the proliferation issue did not just start when Bill Clinton was inaugurated. And the problem with North Korea certainly is not a problem that just emerged in the last year. Under the administration of President Bush, under the administration of President Reagan, these people were four-square and headlong proceeding down the road of nuclear development. Very little was done on the issue of proliferation for those 12 years or so. In fact, ACDA and other nonproliferation efforts were gutted by the prior administration. What you have now is a resurgence of effort by the Clinton administration to focus on proliferation. It is this administration's effort that has succeeded in getting seven sites inspected which we knew existed under the Bush and Reagan administrations, but which they never pushed.”