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For Bush, Many Questions on Iraq and North Korea

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 — President Bush said Wednesday that he would not use force against North Korea because “diplomacy hasn’t run its course,” but acknowledged that many Americans wonder why he invaded Iraq but has not taken military action to head off North Korea’s race for a bomb.

“I’m asked questions around the country, ‘Just go ahead and use the military,’ ” Mr. Bush said at a morning news conference in the Rose Garden, his first extended question-and-answer session with reporters in the days since North Korea announced it had detonated a nuclear device. “And my answer is that I believe the commander in chief must try all diplomatic measures before we commit our military.”

Then, without prompting, the president asked an obvious next question.

“I’ll ask myself a follow-up,” Mr. Bush said. “ ‘If that’s the case, why did you use military action in Iraq?’ And the reason why is because we tried the diplomacy.”

Mr. Bush’s unusual exchange with himself came during an hourlong news conference dominated by questions about North Korea and Iraq. Democrats have criticized him for rushing into a war with Iraq, which turned out not to have unconventional weapons, while not setting limits on North Korea, which declared this week that it had conducted its first nuclear test.

That the president himself raised and rejected this critique appears to reflect concern among Mr. Bush’s advisers that North Korea could be a political liability for Republicans, one that the president needed to confront directly with voters.

Mr. Bush’s stance was to reassert that the United States would not tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea, but that the way to shut down its nuclear programs was through multilateral diplomacy, not one-on-one talks or military action.

Intelligence officials have not yet determined the exact size of the device that North Korea tested, or explained why it appeared to have been fairly small, less than a kiloton. Democrats and Republicans have been arguing over who was responsible for the buildup in the North. Madeleine K. Albright, a secretary of state for former President Bill Clinton, issued a statement on Wednesday defending his administration and striking back at Mr. Bush.

“During the two terms of the Clinton administration, there were no nuclear weapons tests by North Korea, no new plutonium production, and no new nuclear weapons developed in Pyongyang,” Ms. Albright’s statement said. “Through our policy of constructive engagement, the world was safer. President Bush chose a different path, and the results are evident for all to see.”

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“I try to speak as clearly as I can,” President Bush said about the nation’s policy toward nuclear proliferation.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Despite the North’s test, Mr. Bush insisted Wednesday that his diplomatic approach was the best course and that he would continue to seek support for sanctions from other nations. He resisted calls for direct negotiations with North Korea of the sort the Clinton administration had engaged in, saying “the strategy did not work.”

“North Korea has been trying to acquire bombs and weapons for a long period of time,” Mr. Bush said, “long before I came into office.”

On Iraq, Mr. Bush seemed to push back against recent remarks by James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state who is the Republican chairman of a bipartisan panel reassessing Iraq strategy. On Sunday, Mr. Baker suggested that his panel’s report would depart from Mr. Bush’s repeated calls to “stay the course.”

But Mr. Bush signaled that he would not be pressed into a premature withdrawal.

“Stay the course means keep doing what you’re doing,’ ” he said. “My attitude is, don’t do what you’re doing if it’s not working — change. Stay the course also means, don’t leave before the job is done. We’re going to get the job done in Iraq.”

On North Korea, Mr. Bush was asked if he regretted his decision not to take action — military or otherwise — to destroy fuel supplies in 2003, when the North threw out international weapons inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and said it would turn its spent nuclear fuel into weapons. At that time, the fuel was all briefly in one known location.

“I used that moment to continue my desire to convince others to become equity partners in the Korean issue,” Mr. Bush said, referring to the so-called six-party talks aimed at persuading the North to give up its nuclear capacity. He added, “I obviously look at all options all the time, and I felt like the best way to solve this problem would be through a diplomacy effort.”

Experts believe the nuclear buildup in the North dates back to the early 1990’s, when the first President Bush was in office. Under an agreement Mr. Clinton struck in 1994, North Korea agreed to freeze its production of plutonium in return for energy aid. North Korea abided by the freeze, but starting around 1997, it took steps on a second, secret nuclear program.

In 2002, after South Korean and American intelligence agencies found conclusive evidence of that program, the Bush administration confronted the North with the evidence that it had cheated while Mr. Clinton was still in office. That led to the six-nation talks, involving the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.

“The Clinton administration was prepared to accept an imperfect agreement in the interest of achieving limits,” said Gary S. Samore, a North Korea expert who helped negotiate the original 1994 agreement. “The Bush administration is not prepared to accept an imperfect agreement, and the result is that we have no limits.”

But Mr. Bush on Wednesday reiterated his stance that it was “unacceptable” for North Korea to have nuclear weapons. Asked if he was “ready to live with a nuclear North Korea,” Mr. Bush gave a one-word answer: “No.”

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