the u.s. is denuclearrization and a north korean regime saying look what happened top gadhafi. there are people in the administration and a lot of korea watchers who there can envision a process and it involves reaching some kind of a general statement and then north korea blows up some icbms, it freezes production of nuclear materials. it stops nuclear missile test and then over time sanctions. and the main thing is we re not shooting missiles at each other but it s better than where we are now. but the problem is john bolton is dead set against that and you know, look, at the end of the day, bolton has a perfect record of getting things wrong over the last 20 years on iraq, on iran, on north korea. in the case of north korea in 2002, he helped kill the agreed framework which had halted north
it should happen. bolton has sort of suggested he will go along with what the president said but he has advised against it and thinks that kim is not to be trusted and that regime change would be the best course of action here. within the white house, just in the last few hours, they have said there s a team of staffers supposed to to singapore to work on the logistics of the summit. as of now, they re still planning to go. that doesn t mean it s going to happen or happen on june 12th but it s an indication they haven t given up on the possibility of these talks. it s interesting too, nick, when you talk about bolton saying regime change, bolton talking about making another libya out of north korea. libya where gadhafi gave up the weapons and a decade later he s taken from power and killed. it raises the bigger question about any potential negotiations here, how there could be a middle ground if the goal from
we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. gunfire, honking horns, celebrations in cities across libya, marking the death of gadhafi. we re following all the breaking news this hour. the man who ruthlessly ruled the country for 42 years was killed today outside his hometown of sirte. he was 69 years old. president obama said his death marks the end of a long and painful chapter for libya. one year ago, the notion of a free libya seemed impossible. but then the libyan people rose up. and demanded their rights. and when gadhafi and his forces started going city to city, town by town to brutalize men, women and children, the world refused to stand idly by. faced with the potential of mass atrocities and a call for help from the libyan people, the united states and our friends and allies stopped gadhafi s forces in their tracks. there will be difficult days ahead. but the united states, togethe
in libya is stop gadhafi from be slawlgterring his own people. now human rights groups in syria are saying president assad has murdered 2200 of his own people, so should the precedent that was set in libya be applied to syria? well, to an extent, and i think president obama and the allies are having a sensible policy. we ve started very strong international sanctions against the regime. we ve called on the regime to step aside. we re freezing all of their assets as much as we can. we ve got a coalition of european countries, there germany can play a very important role tightening the noose around assad, getting arab countries to participate. the problem, though, is assad controls the armed forces, he controls the institutions. and what the syrians don t want us to do, the syrian people, is a military intervention. this is a very important, strategic area, and we have to be very careful.
side of the rebels. it s a big, big question tonight, wolf. it looks like to me as an outside observer, gloria. the u.s., the british, the french. they ve already come down on the side of the rebels for all practical purposes. all the air power is designed to support the rebels. stop gadhafi s forces. send a message to gadhafi and his sons and others, it s over. give up. get out of there before you die. and isolate gadhafi and find a place for him to go. there s another question, wolf. which is we re not sure who the rebels are. what you saw in the secretary of state was somebody who was circumspect to a degree in trying to evaluate who the rebels are. whereas france may have embraced them. we have stopped short of that in terms of saying, look, we re trying to figure this out. it s a fluid situation. so obviously you don t want to