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
What Libya did was make a strategic determination that it would have a better future-a more secure, a more prosperous future-if it abandoned its weapons of mass destruction.
What we can do is to explain as clearly as possible what the benefits would be of him going down one path, and what the potential consequences would be if he chooses another path.
We are hopeful that the North Koreans can show a little bit more realism, a little bit more flexibility.
It's time for the IRA to go out of business.
First of all we have to recognize that despite all the problems - and in some cases failures - that this regime has been much more successful, much more resilient, than people had anticipated.
So, in a sense, the verification piece is irrelevant to the format issue.
I'm not sure you can do anything quickly or easily with the North.
First of all, I think the situation today is different. We're in a different place than we were in '93, '94.
It is fundamentally, existentially, in their own interest that they and their neighbors do not acquire nuclear weapons.
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.
Again, I think we have much greater diplomatic weight by having all of us sit on the same side of the table wanting the same thing, and putting it to the North Koreans.
It's up to Kim Jong Il to make that decision, and we can't make that for him.
Everyone I have spoken with so far recognises the need for the IRA to respond positively and every has said sooner is better than later and I think there is some concern if it does continue to delay much longer that the situation isn't going to remain the same.
We have a model that we're following, and it's the Libya model.