North Korea Might Not Disarm, McCain Says

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, has questioned North Korea’s willingness to surrender its nuclear weapons under a six-party disarmament deal, the Associated Press reported Saturday (see GSN, Oct. 16, 2007).

It remains uncertain whether Pyongyang would follow through on its 2007 denuclearization agreement, McCain said.  In a recent article for Foreign Affairs magazine, he said nuclear negotiators “must take into account North Korea's ballistic missile programs, its abduction of Japanese citizens and its support for terrorism and proliferation.”

Missile defenses are necessary to curb the threat posed by the Stalinist state and other “rogue regimes” that could target the United States with ballistic missiles, the senator says on his Web site, adding that the U.S. missile shield could “hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China.”

McCain has also demanded transparency from China over its military buildup along the Taiwan Strait (see GSN, Jan. 2).  U.S. officials “must take note” when Beijing “threatens democratic Taiwan with a massive arsenal of missiles and warlike rhetoric,” he said in Foreign Affairs.

The United States has suggested it would take military action to defend Taiwan from an invasion by China, which considers the island to be part of its territory (Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Feb. 9).

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