Kansas
Senator Sam Brownback is
preparing yet another maneuver in his fight to thwart any rapprochement between
the United States and North Korea.
Brownback,
who carries the banner for those who believe confronting the North Korean
regime is preferable to engaging it, is planning to offer a new piece of
legislation aimed at pressuring the State Department to put the hermitic
Stalinist state back on its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The
legislation, which he will introduce this session, aims to kick the chair out
from under the State Department's official explanation as to why the administration
can't relist North Korea, even though North Korea didn't live up to
the bargain it struck
with the Bush administration, which delisted the country in 2008.
"The administration is saying that legally they do
not have the authority to [relist North Korea], but we want to give them back
the authority to do it so it will be clear that this is a choice they are
making," Brownback told The Cable in
an interview. "This would be so they can't hide behind the lawyers."
In fact, that is State's explanation, as laid out by
spokesman Ian Kelly in a May press briefing.
"In order to be designated as a state sponsor of
terrorism, the secretary of state must determine that the government of North
Korea has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism. The
United States will follow the provisions of the law as the facts warrant,"
Kelly said.
Brownback discussed his upcoming bill with Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, who gave no response, Brownback said.
This is only the latest bill Brownback has offered
in his mission to influence North Korea policy. He introduced
a bill in July that would have
reimposed sanctions and put North Korea back on the list, but this one is more
"realistic," he said.
He'll try to attach his language to a bill that's already
moving, but actually passing the legislation is unlikely. In the end, it's not
all that important whether it passes or not.
Brownback is making a policy point and continuing
his ongoing feud with the EAP Bureau at State, which included him holding
up the Campbell nomination this summer.
But Brownback's fight with EAP goes back much
further than Campbell. He held up the nomination of Kathleen Stephens in 2008 to become
ambassador to South Korea in order to get concessions from then Assistant Secretary
Chris Hill, including getting Jay Leftkowitz, the oft-ignored human rights
envoy on North Korea, a seat at the table.
The Kansas senator then held up
Hill's nomination to become ambassador to Iraq because Hill failed to
deliver on any of the promises he made to Brownback during the Stephens affair.
Brownback makes no secret of his ultimate goal, to
stop any new talks with North Korea before they start, in light of Pyongyang's saber-rattling
and nuclear brinksmanship.
"Now we're going to engage with them?" he said, "Now's
the time to be much more strong against them."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in June that she wants
to see "recent evidence of their support for international terrorism"
before she would relist them. That's not likely, because North Korea's
suspected nuclear
and missile
exports to dictatorial regimes don't technically qualify as terrorism.
What did
qualify was North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and
1980s, which has never
been resolved, but that's an entirely separate issue.
File Photo: AFP/Getty Images
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