McCain: North Korea bigger threat than Iraq

Sen. John McCain

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, is taking a harder line than the Bush administration in the current standoff with North Korea. McCain argues that North Korea, not Iraq, poses a bigger threat to U.S. national security. The senator spoke to CNN anchor Judy Woodruff Thursday, who asked him about the discovery of empty chemical warheads in Iraq.

MCCAIN: I'm not surprised that we have found these weapons that are containers that Saddam Hussein has. In 1998, when the inspectors left, were forced out, there was ample evidence that he had these weapons, and there's been no authentication of any kind that he may have destroyed them.

So, yes, North Korea still poses a greater threat, but that does not diminish the fact that Iraq is still a significant clear and present danger.

WOODRUFF: With regard to Iraq ...there are more of those outside the administration who are saying their concern .. [with a] delay [of] any kind of military action, just because of the back and forth, the uncertainty over what [Saddam] has, and what the United States knows. Do you have those concerns?

MCCAIN: Well, I certainly think there are concerns when you have the United Nations playing a significant role, when Mr. Blix is calling for continued inspections, but the fact is I think that the administration, buttressed by information that just came to light today and other information, can make a case to the United Nations and the world that Saddam Hussein has not complied, if he continues with what he's doing, which is non-compliance.

WOODRUFF: Back to North Korea. You also write in the "Weekly Standard" that, in your view, the administration has demonstrated a deterioration of its resolve that you say is reckless. Do you really mean that?

MCCAIN: I think we're dealing with a sociopath that rules the most Stalinist, oppressive state in the world. If you saw news reports last night about 200,000 people in prison camps and where people die every day, which are as bad as the Gulag, that they have developed these weapons in direct violation of their commitments to the United States.

We and other nations have given them a billion dollars in oil and food supply. Meanwhile, 2 million of their citizens starve to death, and this person has kidnapped people, he's dug tunnels, they've provoked small gun fights with the South Koreans.

Of course it's dangerous, and this administration has got to make it clear that they must comply with the agreements that they made before we make further offers of food or oil or anything else, particularly odious is propping up a regime that is so outrageously oppressive.

WOODRUFF: What's so wrong, though, with the administration saying to North Korea, if you disarm, we will help you with oil and with food and so forth?

MCCAIN: But first -- that would be fine with me, although I find it distasteful as an advocate of human rights that we would prop up a regime that starved to death 2 million of its citizens during the 1990s, but first they have to hand over the rods...hand over the enriched uranium that they are now constructing additional nuclear weapons with.

Then we will talk about our relationship with North Korea, not before, because they are in complete violation of the agreement that they made. How can you trust them to keep another agreement if they broke the last one?

WOODRUFF: How do you account for the administration last week saying, we won't talk, we won't negotiate with the North Koreans, and this week making this offer?

MCCAIN: The administration, as far as I can tell collectively, has said everything, from we negotiate and continue to, we won't negotiate to, we won't be blackmailed. There has said everything. There's got to be coherence in their message .... no matter what it is, and their policy. Second of all, we have to recognize that these people will not abide by an agreement that's not verifiable. We have to go back to Ronald Reagan. Trust but verify.

WOODRUFF: The word you use, reckless, it's a strong word.

MCCAIN: It is reckless to ignore a direct threat to the United States of America in the form of a missile and nuclear weapons that can strike us. It is reckless to, which they are developing, to neglect or to not take head-on a challenge that, of a nuclear weapon and a missile that can strike Tokyo.