Mitchell Reiss
Mitchell Reiss
Mitchell B. Reissis a senior American diplomat who is now the President and CEO of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia. Immediately prior to this post, he served a tenure of four years as the 27th president of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. He served as Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State under Colin Powell. He also served as the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, with the diplomatic rank of Ambassador, until stepping...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDiplomat
CountryUnited States of America
The nexus between terrorism and nuclear weapons, or even nuclear material, is obviously a current concern.
The other countries did not share the same concern the United States had in the early '90's - that North Korea actually had an ongoing nuclear weapons program.
Now North Korea certainly is located in a different place geographically, but I think it faces the same type of strategic decision. Does it want a different future for its people?
But with lots of good ideas, implementation is the key, and so we need to keep our eye on the ball as we go forward and make sure that people honor their pledges in terms of financial commitments, and that we actually use this money so that it makes a real difference.
So the president set out the policy guidance and said it had to take place in a multilateral fashion so that other countries in the region could be invested in the success of this process.
You have to play the cards you are dealt and if it has made it harder, it doesn't matter, you still have to get the deal done.
Any agreement that you have isn't going to be based on North Korea's intentions or trust.
It's up to Kim Jong Il to make that decision, and we can't make that for him.
Then the final thing is enforcement. What happens when we actually catch somebody who has violated international law, rules, and regulations?
They would rather the United States play the bad cop, and they could play the good cop - let the United States do all the heavy lifting here.
The negotiations didn't end when the six parties left Beijing.
The negotiations are continuing now through the media.
It's time for the IRA to go out of business.
The format's better because it gives us a much stronger hand to play when going to the North Koreans unified, with our allies and partners in the region, all of us saying the same thing: telling them their current course is unacceptable.