North Korea Pulls Out of Treaty
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well from Santa Fe to Washington, D.C. we go. Let's get reaction from the White House. We turn now to Dana Bash, who's in our Washington bureau. Good morning Dana.</s>DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Miles. Well all of this comes just one day after the -- after North Korea really shook up the world by pulling out of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. That move, the White House tried to downplay saying you know this is a crisis that started -- or excuse me, they're not using the word crisis, a situation that started in October when the U.S. first found out that North Korea was using was enriching uranium, something that could lead to the making of a nuclear weapon. But this is a move -- this move yesterday, this is a move that Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly rebuked.</s>COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: The United States condemns this action on the part of North Korea and also finds it very, very unfortunate. This past Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors, 35 nations, unanimously agreed to give North Korea a chance to come into compliance with its international obligations. And North Korea has thumbed its nose at the international community.</s>BASH: Now, Colin Powell said that the U.S. will support a move to bring this whole issue up before the U.N. Security Council and that could potentially -- they could potentially vote for to impose economic sanctions on North Korea, which is already incredibly impoverished and has major economic problems as it is. But with really all of this ratcheting up by North Korea, the United States is hoping that its neighbors, like Russia, like China, and Japan and South Korea, will understand that they have to put maximum pressure on North Korea to stop what they're doing, that this is not, as North Korea would like it to be, a U.S. versus North Korea issue. This is a worldwide threat, and the president actually spoke yesterday morning with the Chinese President Jiang Zemin, they spoke for about 15 minutes and U.S. President Bush told Jiang Zemin that this is something that binds the two countries with a common purpose. Now, the problem here is that there is, of course, a lot of pressure on the United States, on the administration, to engage with North Korea. The IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei came to the United States, came to Washington and met with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, talking to them, I'm told from a source close to him, saying the United States must engage, must make this -- make it very clear to North Korea that they will not only come to the table, but will talk about whatever North Korea wants to talk about, but, so far, the administration maintaining that they will not be blackmailed and they will not be induced or have any kind of quid pro quo for what they're saying is North Korea's bad behavior -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: CNN's Dana Bash in Washington. Thank you very much -- Heidi. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com