The Bush Administration’s engagement of North Korea – which I described earlier and giving Kim Jong-il enough rope to hang himself (IMO the final test of this will be what the administration accepts as North Korea’s uranium declaration) – has been drawing criticism from the likes of John Bolton from the beginning.

Now Republican opposition to dealing with North Korea is gaining strength, particularly due to the secrecy concerning the North Korea-Syria connection, which appears to have involved the construction of a nuclear reactor. The dance Rice is doing sounds a lot like what we get from Hill and DoS spokesmen:

The debate moved to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, when [Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] had a tense private meeting with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Just days earlier, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen was the co-author of an opinion article questioning the White House approach, which offers incentives to North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program.

That article also criticized the Bush administration for what it called the “veil of secrecy” surrounding intelligence that led to an Israeli airstrike in Syria last month on the suspected reactor site, and for the fact that only a handful of lawmakers have been briefed on the subject.

Congressional officials said that Ms. Ros-Lehtinen contended that if more lawmakers knew about the intelligence, more would be concerned about a pending nuclear agreement with North Korea.

[. . .]

The White House now finds itself charting a similar course to the one for which it heaped criticism on the Clinton administration in 2002, accusing it of being too trusting.

[. . .]

Now, the White House is trying to deflect criticism from fellow Republicans, including even hawkish officials within the administration, that Ms. Rice is putting her desires for a diplomatic agreement above national security interests.

One senior administration official, who has seen the intelligence about the Syrian site and advocates a tougher line against North Korea, said he was frustrated that even in light of possible North Korean help on a Syrian nuclear program, “we are shaking hands with the North Koreans because they have once again told us they are going to disarm.”

[. . .]

“Republicans are brokenhearted that the administration has done a complete U-turn on this issue,” said John R. Bolton, former United States ambassador to the United Nations and an advocate of a tough approach to North Korea.

But Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the new intelligence was even more reason to take a diplomatic approach to North Korea: “To rein these guys inside a deal that has some transparency.”

[. . .]

The administration and the Israeli government have kept silent about the strike, but American and foreign officials with access to intelligence reports have said the target was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to generate its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel. They said it would have been years before Syria could have produced nuclear weapons fuel on its own.

[. . .]

After the private meeting with Representative Ros-Lehtinen, Ms. Rice went before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and defended her diplomatic approach to North Korea, saying she was using “the teeth of diplomacy, not just the carrots of diplomacy.”

This elicited a challenge from Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado. “I would really like to know specifically what those teeth might be,” he said.

Ms. Rice refused to comment on the Israeli strike, but repeated what has become the official view about any North Korean involvement in a Syrian nuclear program: “The president has made very clear that North Korean or Syrian or anybody else’s proliferation is of deep concern to the United States.”

Mr. Tancredo persisted: “So if in fact it turns out to be the case that they did provide weaponry or some form of nuclear materials to Syria, then that would put them in violation of the agreement?”

Ms. Rice again refused to be pinned down. “The United States is finally in a position to perhaps do something about the North Korean program, and I think we want to keep that capability,” she said.