…the diplomatic, nonconfrontational approach the administration has taken has clearly put Mr. Bush's aides in the odd position of explaining why they are massing troops around Iraq, as it lets inspectors roam the country and releases lists of weapons scientists, while insisting on patient diplomacy with a country that has expelled those inspectors and announced that it will restart plutonium production immediately.

U.S. Eases Threat on Nuclear Arms for North Korea
The Bush administration backed away today from a longstanding declaration by the United States that it would not tolerate a North Korean nuclear arsenal, as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other officials insisted that it would be counterproductive to set deadlines for North Korea to meet American demands or make threats to take military action.

…Mr. Powell refused to characterize as a crisis North Korea's expulsion of nuclear inspectors and its declaration that it would begin manufacturing plutonium from spent nuclear fuel, insisting instead that it was a "serious situation." He acknowledged on the ABC News program "This Week" that the Clinton administration had what he called "a declaratory policy" that if North Korea began to reactivate its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, the country's main nuclear facility, "they would attack it."

"We don't have that policy," said Mr. Powell, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bill Clinton during the start of the previous North Korean nuclear crisis. "We're not saying what we might or might not do."

The ambiguous signal to North Korea, made after lengthy consultations with President Bush at his ranch here, represents a major strategic gamble. The C.I.A. has warned that once the North begins reprocessing nuclear fuel into plutonium, it could produce five or six weapons by early summer. The C.I.A. has estimated that it already has two.

But Mr. Bush and his aides have concluded that warning North Korea that it would not be allowed to produce more weapons would only create a sense of crisis, exactly what officials say the North seeks, and what they want to avoid. The administration has opted to pursue economic isolation of a country that is already one of the world's most isolated. The administration's position was met with considerable skepticism today by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Several of Mr. Bush's national security aides said in interviews that Mr. Powell was simply giving voice to the military reality that the United States has no effective way of protecting South Korea or Japan from a North Korean counterattack if the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon were bombed.

"I'm not saying we don't have military options," one of Mr. Bush's most senior advisers said in an interview. "I'm just saying we don't have good ones."

Still, the diplomatic, nonconfrontational approach the administration has taken has clearly put Mr. Bush's aides in the odd position of explaining why they are massing troops around Iraq, as it lets inspectors roam the country and releases lists of weapons scientists, while insisting on patient diplomacy with a country that has expelled those inspectors and announced that it will restart plutonium production immediately.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/30/international/30DIPL.html?pagewanted=all&position=top