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
We are hopeful that the North Koreans can show a little bit more realism, a little bit more flexibility.
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.
It is fundamentally, existentially, in their own interest that they and their neighbors do not acquire nuclear weapons.
I think all of us are pretty disappointed with the abdication of responsibility by many unionist leaders, ... No political party, and certainly no responsible political leadership, deserves to serve in a government unless it cooperates and supports fully and unconditionally the police, and calls on its supporters to do so.
I'm not sure you can do anything quickly or easily with the North.
They would rather the United States play the bad cop, and they could play the good cop - let the United States do all the heavy lifting here.
The negotiations didn't end when the six parties left Beijing.
The negotiations are continuing now through the media.
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.
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.
And it's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say that explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated.
And it's not surprising that there should be disagreement - it'd be a little surprising if there was complete consensus on any foreign policy issue.
And I think they realize that the other five countries are lined up against them, because all five are opposed to North Korea having nuclear weapons.
And so there has been a lot of diplomatic movement.