Free Republic

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) -- The United States has demanded that the IRA disband after the guerrilla group's astonishing offer to shoot the killers of a murdered Northern Ireland Catholic man. "It's time for the IRA to go out of business," U.S. special envoy Mitchell Reiss said Wednesday. For the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland's biggest Irish nationalist party, the U.S. demand was yet another blow to its democratic credentials. Reiss told BBC radio: "It's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated. "You can't sign...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States warned North Korea that it would face action from the international community if it does not stop exporting dangerous weapons and other illegal activities. "If North Korea will not act, it will find the United States, its allies and other partners equally prepared to respond with measures that ensure North Korea cannot threaten our countries or international stability," said Mitchell Reiss, the department's director of policy planning. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington's leading repositories of expertise on East Asia, Reiss said the United States was taking steps to enforce its laws...

The man who helped engineer the Clinton administration's failed attempt to buy off North Korea with fuel and nuclear-power technology has been appointed head of a small but powerful office in the State Department. Mitchell Reiss helped start and manage a multinational organization devoted to giving nuclear technology and oil to the North Korean regime during the Clinton administration. The idea, hatched during the first Clinton term, was to try to convince North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, a Stalinist, to stop building nuclear weapons. The policy was a failure. With U.S. policy toward North Korea a shambles after Pyongyang...