Q: Yeah, I'm in Charlie's spot. (Laughter.)

On North Korea, the North Koreans announced steps to unfreeze a reactor that's been idle since 1994 in the non-proliferation pact with the United States. Some experts think the North has been emboldened by current U.S. preoccupation with Iraq. Do you share that analysis? And is the United States any less likely to resort to the use of force in North Korea because of the focus on Iraq and the war on terror?

Rumsfeld: I have no reason to believe that you're correct that North Korea feels emboldened because of the world's interest in Iraq. If they do, it would be a mistake.

Q: But the United States is no longer postured to fight two major regional wars at a time since the QDR. Are you saying that in fact the United States is entirely capable of pursuing the war against terror, Iraq and North Korea at the same time?

Rumsfeld: The answer to the last question is yes, we are perfectly capable of doing that which is necessary.

And second, I would correct your first portion of your question, in this way: You said, I believe, that we're no longer capable of fighting two major regional conflicts since the Quadrennial Defense Review. That's false. We were -- we had limitations and shortcomings prior to the Quadrennial Defense Review. The Quadrennial Defense Review was a reflection of reality.

Second, we are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts, as the national strategy and the force-sizing construct clearly indicate. We're capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other. And let there be no doubt about it.

Myers: Can I make a comment on the North Korean reactor? I heard on the radio this morning that North Korea is claiming that they're restarting it to add electricity to their country. And the fact is, as I'm told, is that that reactor adds negligible electricity to the power grid in North Korea, and most of the electricity it produces is consumed by the reactor itself to run things. So.

Q: But the big question is, what happens if they move to reprocess the plutonium from the spent fuel rods that are currently under seal at Yongbyon? The Clinton administration had drawn a kind of red line, saying that it was ready to use force if the North Koreans moved to use that plutonium. Would that -- is that also the policy of the Bush administration?

Rumsfeld: The situation today is somewhat different from then. And it is, as you know, a subject that has been under intensive discussion by the president of the United States with the People's Republic of China, with Russia, with Japan and with South Korea. And those discussions are ongoing.

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Q: Is there a military option on the table for preventing North Korea from manufacturing nuclear weapons?

Rumsfeld: For preventing them from manufacturing their weapons --

Q: Nuclear weapons.

Rumsfeld: Nuclear weapons. Well, let me just put it this way: that the task of the department, one of the assignments of the department, is to prepare for a whole host of contingencies. We tend not to get into details as to what those contingencies might be.

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Q: Mr. Secretary, you mentioned diplomacy on North Korea, but probably the most important country that we're not talking to is North Korea. And some of our allies seem to think that there's --

Rumsfeld: We're not talking to them? Assistant Secretary Kelly was over there. That's when they took the occasion to announce that they were trashing every one of their international agreements. How can you say we're not talking to them?

Q: But are we talking to them now? We'll be talking to them about this particular --

Rumsfeld: This is State Department stuff, and I thought I indicated earlier that, yes, we are engaged in a process of discussions, the United States, President Bush, Secretary Powell, with the People's Republic of China, with the Russian Federation, with Japan and the Republic of Korea. And that process is ongoing. There are a variety of interactions taking place.

Q: Is our rhetoric in any way responsible for pushing them to the point where they feel like they have -- the only option that they have is to pull these restrictions off and start going down a road again of building nuclear weapons?

Rumsfeld: That's an interesting question. One of those, like, "Stop me before I kill again"? (Laughter.) That type of thing? I mean, really, their actions are result of decisions by the leadership of the country. The leadership of the country is currently repressing its people, starving its people, has large numbers of its people in concentration camps, driving people to try to leave the country through China and other methods, starving these people. Their economy is in the tank. People at all levels are unhappy with that leadership. It is a government that has made a whole host of decisions that have nothing to do with us. I don't know why they decided they wanted to have those concentration camps. I have no idea why they decided that they wanted to end up, after a relatively few years, with an economy that's 1/36th the size of South Korea's. Think of that. Here, the same people on different sides of a line, and the GDP in South Korea is 36 times, or something like that -- it's close enough for government work -- that of North Korea. Why would they do anything they do? Do you think -- the idea that it's the rhetoric from the United States that's causing them to starve their people or to do these idiotic things, or to try to build a nuclear power plant. They don't need a nuclear power plant. Their power grid couldn't even absorb that. If you look at a picture from the sky of the Korean Peninsula at night, South Korea is filled with lights and energy and vitality and a booming economy; North Korea is dark. It is a tragedy what's being done in that country. And the suggestion that it is a result of rhetoric from outside I think is -- misses the point. We have a very strange situation in that country.

I've got to remember that I'm speaking about diplomacy here and be diplomatic. (Laughter.)

Myers: I might just add that it was -- (laughs) -- that it was in 1994, I think, is when they, you know, when all this came up, and that was -- they made a fundamental decision there to continue this uranium enrichment business at the same time they were allowing the IAEA to put seals on the fuel rods. And so, I mean, this has been a long-standing, obviously, policy of the North Korean regime.

Q: But, sir, are you saying -

Rumsfeld: One of the comments by one of the people to -- I'm told -- to Assistant Secretary Kelly was something like what you just said. "Oh, it was your rhetoric that made us do it." And it turns out they had started doing all this well before President Bush came into office; well before the "Axis of Evil" speech. It's utter nonsense.

Q: Could I just follow up on that?

Rumsfeld: Why not?

Q: Were you suggesting that the uranium enrichment activity that we confronted them with a few months ago, Kelly, that that had been going on since 1994?

Myers: I think that's -- I think they admitted that they had been pursuing that all along, right?

Q: Really?

Rumsfeld: I did not know that.

Myers: I -- well, then I -- if you don't know it, then maybe I don't know it. (Laughter.) Well, given that we read a lot of the same --

Rumsfeld: We do know it started well before --

Q: Yeah, most of the -- during most of the framework agreement time, '94.

Myers: Yeah, I think I'd stick with the fact the decision was made a long, long time ago that they were going to continue on that program at the same time that they agreed to have the fuel rods under the monitor of IAEA.

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Q: Mr. Secretary, you just said that the North Koreans don't need a nuclear power plant, their power grid can't even handle it. Yet it's U.S. policy -- it has been since '94 -- to supply two light- water nuclear reactors. Are you suggesting that that is wrong-headed?

Rumsfeld: No. I wasn't there. I didn't walk in their shoes. And there's no question but that North Korea wanted exactly what they got in the agreed framework. They happen not to want it badly enough to continue with the agreed framework, because they trashed it. But I wasn't there. I don't know what the -- I don't know what was on the table. My personal view is that they would have been fine with fossil fuel electric power. They certainly need electric power, there's no question about that.

Q: Are you suggesting that you would oppose --

Rumsfeld: But I don't walk around in the Christmas season talking about wrong-headedness or things like that. I'm much too sensitive and -- (laughter) -- into the season.

Q: But notwithstanding your sensitivity, just on the matter of public policy, would you oppose going back to plans to supply --

Rumsfeld: It's not -- it's not for me. That's -- the State Department does those things, and I defer to them.