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U.S. changing approach to Iraq, Iran, North Korea

Bush's State of the Union address may signal a change in diplomacy.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Building on President Bush's tough comments against Iraq, Iran and North Korea, top administration officials Wednesday said the time has come for the international community to look seriously at nations trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The United States is still open to discussions with the three nations that Bush mentioned in his State of the Union address, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. But he stressed that the United States for many years has been "quite nicely and diplomatically" offering invitations to meet with those nations' officials -- overtures that were ultimately rejected.

From now on, Boucher said, "We'll tell you what we think, and we'll tell you we're ready to discuss these issues." Since September 11, he said, "I would say the priorities have only gotten higher."

During the State of the Union address, Bush singled out North Korea, Iraq and Iran, calling them an "axis of evil, aiming to threaten the peace of the world."

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"By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic," Bush said.

One senior administration official said the president wanted "to make clear that this is a growing danger, that the United States cannot stand by and fail to respond -- that the whole world cannot stand by and fail to respond."

"The president is talking about two important objectives here: One is to rout out terrorism, but he is also concerned -- and we have reason to be concerned ... about the proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction into the hands of irresponsible states," this official said.

The State Department Wednesday updated its travel warning for Iran, reminding U.S. citizens that "some elements of the Iranian goverment and population remain hostile to the United States."

Citing the Kurdish northwest of the country, the area near the Iraqi border and the Baluchistan border area near Pakistan and Afghanistan as trouble spots, the advisory "warns U.S. citizens to carefully consider the risks of travel to Iran."

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it ought to be clear to the three nations that the president "is calling attention to the risks to the world" that they pose.

"If I were in Iran or North Korea or Iraq and I heard the president of the United States say what he said last night about weapons of mass destruction and about terrorism and about terrorist networks and about nations that harbor terrorists, I don't think there would be a lot of ambiguity as to the view he holds of those problems and their behavior," Rumsfeld said.

He refused to say whether the United States planned military actions against the nations, but he said the president's message was given with "near perfect clarity."

"If the world decides to impose choices on us, then we'll make choices with respect to the things we're doing and deal with those problems," Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon briefing.

Asked if the United States was prepared if necessary to fight a multi-front war, Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "When we're called upon by the president to do whatever, we'll be ready to do that."

In Baghdad, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan criticized Bush for singling out his nation.

"This statement of President Bush is stupid and a statement that does not befit the leader of the biggest state in the world," Ramadan told reporters after speaking to an Iraqi legal conference.

Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi also rejected Bush's allegations linking Iran to terrorism.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran considers these remarks as interference in its internal affairs," Kharrazi said. He labeled Bush's comments "arrogant."

North Korea's official media scoffed at Bush for identifying the country as a threat. A newspaper commentary carried by the country's official news agency criticized what it called a "loudmouthed threat" meant to justify a U.S. military presence in South Korea.

-- CNN Correspondent Kelly Wallace contributed to this report.