In a US presidential race dominated by national security, what some see as the world's biggest nuclear danger -- North Korea -- is only now emerging as a hot political topic.
It's a difficult subject for Republicans and Democrats alike. North Korea doesn't dominate the news the way Iraq does, making it an unlikely issue for winning votes. Moreover, both parties are vulnerable to criticism on their handling of the North Korean threat.
President George W. Bush has said that he will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea. Yet North Korea, long believed to have possessed one or two nuclear weapons, has restarted its weapons program and could soon have several more, if it doesn't have them already. Multinational negotiations appear to have produced little.
Republicans argue actions of the Clinton administration led to the current standoff.
They say a 1994 agreement for North Korea to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for food and energy assistance lacked safeguards to prevent cheating. That allowed North Korea to develop a secret uranium-based weapons program, they say, even while the older plutonium program was stopped as promised.
Although North Korea hasn't been at the forefront for most of his campaign, Senator John Kerry has accused Bush repeatedly of being so fixated on Iraq that he ignored the danger posed by Kim Jong-il's government.
Kerry stepped up the criticisms after an explosion last Thursday that raised fears Pyongyang had conducted a nuclear test. The North Koreans say the explosion was the result of the demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project. US officials say they do not believe it was a nuclear blast, accidental or otherwise.
"The mere fact that we are even contemplating a nuclear weapons test by North Korea highlights a massive national security failure by President Bush," Kerry said on Sunday.
In a telephone call to The New York Times, Kerry accused the administration of letting "a nuclear nightmare" develop in North Korea.
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan accused Kerry of wanting to return to "the failed Clinton administration policy" on North Korea.
"That failed policy let North Korea dupe the United States. It would be the wrong approach to go down that road again," he said on Monday aboard Air Force One en route to a Bush campaign stop.
Bush has stressed that the US will work with the negotiating partners -- South Korea, Japan, China and Russia -- toward a verifiable dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs.
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