Hillary Clinton: Don’t Think Everything Is All Good With N. Korea Just Because We Got Our Journalists Back

Hillary Clinton says that yesterday’s return of two imprisoned American journalits from North Korea, isn’t an indication that shyte is all good.

Via AP:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday she isn’t counting on a breakthrough in relations with North Korea now that the communist nation has freed two American journalists.

The pair of journalists flew home Wednesday with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who traveled to Pyongyang after receiving word from the North Koreans that his visit would help win their release. Hillary Clinton called her husband’s trip a humanitarian mission, separate from persistent tensions with North Korea over its nuclear program.

Still, she held out hope of a thaw in relations.

“Perhaps they will now be willing to start talking to us within the context of the six-party talks about the international desire to see them denuclearize,” she said Wednesday on NBC’s “Today” show.

She said North Korea had sent a message through the two detained journalists and their families that sending Bill Clinton as an envoy “would be the best way to assure their release.”

Asked whether the former president’s lengthy meeting with North Korea’s authoritarian leader Kim Jong Il might lead to a breakthrough on nuclear issues, Hillary Clinton said she didn’t know.

“That wasn’t the purpose of it, and it certainly is not anything we’re counting on,” she said, “because the Obama administration has to deal with North Korea going forward. But I hope that North Korea makes the right choice.”

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday that both the United States and North Korea can claim victory from the former president’s mission.

“It’s equal right now” in terms of public relations one-upmanship between Washington and Pyongyang, said Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

He told CBS’s “The Early Show,” that North Korea “used the two journalists as bargaining chips.” Kim “gets a former president on his soil” at a time of turmoil in relations between the two countries. And Washington wins release of the two Americans, and perhaps an easing of tensions.

Earlier, Hillary Clinton told reporters that Euna Lee and Laura Ling were “extremely excited” to be on their way home to the United States. They were arrested after allegedly crossing into North Korea from China earlier this year. They had been sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor.

The ex-president left North Korea aboard a charter jetliner with Ling and Lee late Tuesday EDT. They flew directly to Los Angeles to reunite the women with their families.

“It was just a good day to be able to see this happen,” Hillary Clinton said.

The Obama administration said Tuesday that the families of the two reporters had asked the former president to go to Pyongyang. A senior administration official said the families were joined in the request by former Vice President Al Gore.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of events leading up to Clinton’s trip, said the former president’s mission did not include any discussions about issues beyond the release of Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, both journalists with Gore’s Current TV media venture.

Hillary Clinton also rejected an official report by the North Korean news agency that said Bill Clinton had delivered an apology about the incident to the country’s ailing leader, Kim Jong Il.

“That is not true,” Hillary Clinton said. “That did not occur.”

The journalists were captured while on assignment to collect material for a report about trafficking of North Korean women into China.

Mediaoutrage–  After making the Clinton’s look all good, you know Bill came home to some good ole fashion porno-graphic head work.