U.S. Officials at Odds Over N.Korea Human Rights Report

An yearly U.S. State Department human rights study on statuses in North Korean Peninsula have "sparked internal tussling," the American Capital Post reported on Wednesday.

According to the newspaper, diplomatists at the State Department's Agency of East Asiatic and Pacific Ocean Personal Business disagreed with functionaries at the Agency of Democracy, Person Rights and Labor (DRL) over the tone of voice and nicety of the report.

DRL functionaries be given to be hard-line human rights advocates, the newspaper said, while those at the regional agency prefer a more than diplomatic approach, so as not to irritate North Korea.

Because of this, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who must cover with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, is apparently having a difficult clip trying to intercede between the two groupings of officials.

The American Capital Post wrote, "On Friday, Glyn Davies, the principal deputy sheriff sheriff helper secretary in the East Asia bureau, sent an e-mail to Erica Barks-Ruggles, A deputy helper secretary in the DRL bureau, regarding some alterations in the introductory linguistic communication of a study on North Korea."

According to the newspaper, Davies said in the e-mail, "I cognize you are under the National Security Council [National Security Council] gun," apparently to acquire the study done so the National Security Council can reexamine it, "but hope given the Secretary's precedence on the six-party talks, we can give a few adjectives for the cause."

As a result, the words "the inhibiting North Korean regime" in a bill of exchange study were replaced with "the North Korean government," and the sentence "Reports of public executings were on the rise" was replaced with "Reports of public executings continued to surface," the newspaper wrote.

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