Political Quotes

“These are in strong rebuttal of my colleague's comments. I will read what the President said with reference to North Korea: Well, I think it is an issue. Obviously, I am concerned about North Korea developing nuclear weapons, not only for their own use, but perhaps choose to proliferate them, sell them. The President is working in a national multilateral forum to try to address this problem because it is regional in that Russia, Japan, South Korea and, indeed, China have a heavy stake in seeing that the Korean peninsula does not become nuclearized. It is clear as that, I say to my friend, and I think the President, in a very responsible way, the initial approach to this, a multilateral approach, the approach my colleague is urging on the President with regard to Iraq, is applying in the Korean peninsula situation. It does not preclude possibly bilateral discussions at some later date and time. Second, on the issue of Iraq, the question is time, months. Time is not on our side. The President addressed this very explicitly last night in his remarks. He simply said that his concern--and I will put the text in the Record--his concern is, again, the question of proliferation.”