Bush Policy on `Axis of Evil' Suffers Setbacks
By PETER BAKER & DAFNA LINZER
The Washington Post
President Bush's campaign against what he once termed the axis of evil has suffered reverses on all three fronts in recent days that underscore the profound challenges confronting him 31/2 years after he vowed to take action.
First, multilateral talks orchestrated by the United States to pressure North Korea to give up nuclear weapons adjourned last week after 13 days without agreement. Then Iran restarted its program to convert uranium, in defiance of the United States and Europe. Finally, negotiators in Iraq failed to draft a new constitution by Monday's deadline amid an unrelenting guerrilla war against U.S. forces.
None of these developments may be fatal to Bush's policy goals, but the quick succession of setbacks has left his national security team privately discouraged and searching for answers. Whereas Bush in his first term vowed to reinvent foreign policy with a new doctrine of military pre-emption to deal with rogue states, he largely has dropped such talk since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Instead, he has favored diplomacy with Tehran and Pyongyang and nation-building with Baghdad -- yet the old-fashioned improvisation has yielded similarly murky results.
Administration officials publicly have put the best face on the situation, finding hope in the fact that Iraq's sectarian leaders remain at the negotiating table and that neither Iran nor North Korea has ruled out further talks. Unlike in Iraq two years ago, U.S. officials note, this time they are working more or less in tandem with European and Asian allies.
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