Obama Picks Foreign Policy Advisors
By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama named a team of transition advisors to help shape diplomatic initiatives for his administration. One of the appointees, Susan Rice, is an expert on North Korean denuclearization who met with President Lee Myung-bak several days ago in Washington when he was attending the Group of 20 financial summit.
Rice was tapped to help lead a foreign policy working group for Obama's presidential transition ― this year, she worked as a senior foreign policy advisor to his campaign team.
Rice was assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Bill Clinton administration and is knowledgeable on North Korean issues.
She has been a frequent commentator on that issue and has appeared on various U.S. television programs this year to explain Obama's position on the Stalinist country and denuclearization.
Speaking on the nuclear issue, Rice said in September that when it comes to policy on North Korea, the ``Bush administration has failed.'' She attributed this to President Bush's unwillingness to engage directly with the North Korean regime.
Rice has said that Obama would ``combine stronger sanctions with diplomatic means to the maximum extent possible.''
She said, ``When the Bush administration took office, our intelligence community estimated that North Korea had enough material to make one to two nuclear weapons. Now they estimate that North Korea has enough for some eight to 10 nuclear weapons.''
The Obama camp also appointed to the foreign policy working group James Steinberg, dean of the public affairs graduate school at the University of Texas and a former deputy national security advisor during the Clinton administration. Rice and Steinberg will also head President-elect Obama's advisory team on national security.