N.Korea: Incremental Strategy

Bush Rebuffs Hard-Liners To Ease North Korean Curbs
(New York Times)…Helene Cooper, June 27, 2008

…In the internal Bush administration war between the State Department and Mr. Cheney’s office over North Korea, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top North Korea envoy, Christopher R. Hill, won a major battle against the Cheney camp when President Bush announced Thursday that he was taking the country he once described as part of the “axis of evil” off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

But the declaration falls short of the full accounting that the administration had sought, since it omits any information about North Korea’s suspected efforts to enrich uranium, or the extent of any of the North’s sharing of technology around the world.

Removing N. Korea from the terrorism blacklist is significant.