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Former U.S. Envoy Explains Resignation, Calls for Bilateral Talks Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. State Department expert on North Korea, wrote today that his recent resignation was not a protest to the Bush Administration’s policy toward Pyongyang but rather a reaction to being shut out of the multilateral talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis (see GSN, Sept. 8). In a Los Angeles Times commentary, Pritchard said, “I was brought into this administration precisely because of my experience in dealing with North Koreans, but was now perceived as too soft on North Korea. I had tendered my resignation April 18 when I was not selected to lead the trilateral talks in Beijing. Secretary of State Colin Powell asked me to stay on for a while and, out of enormous respect for him, I did,” Pritchard wrote. He repeated earlier criticism of the White House refusal to participate in direct talks with North Korea. “It is not possible to have serious, sustained discussion in a plenary setting over a few days. Six delegations, 24 interpreters and many note-takers guarantee that the reading of scripted remarks is about the only thing that will take place in open session,” he wrote. “The structure of the six-party talks is useful and will ultimately be a significant part of the solution, but we must be able to engage the North Koreans at length,” he added (Jack Pritchard, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 10).
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