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Barack Obama is emerging as the most hawkish candidate in the Democrat camp, while Bill Richardson is firmly establishing his diplomatic dove credentials, according 2008 presidential candidates' responses to seven key nuclear weapons and international peace and security questions posed by Council for a Livable World.

Only Democrats Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson completed the Council's questionnaire, with Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, along with all of the Republican candidates, chosing not to respond.

Obama was the only candidate to explicitly state military action cannot be ruled out when confronting Iran and North Korea, while Biden, Clinton, Edwards, and Richardson all insisted that negotiations are required to achieve a successful outcome and are a necessary part of leadership, and should not be seen as some sort of capitulation or concession.

"Iran and North Korea could trigger regional arms races, creating dangerous nuclear flashpoints in the Middle East and East Asia," Obama said. "In confronting these threats, I will not take the military option off the table."

Obama did not oppose negotiations with the two regimes, making it clear that military options should only follow "aggressive diplomacy."

"But our first measure must be sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy - of the kind the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to engage in," the Senator from Illinois said.

Richardson expressed preference for a "carrot and stick" approach.

"In dealing with difficult regimes like Iran and North Korea, we must remember that no nation has ever been forced to renounce nuclear weapons - but that many nations have been convinced to renounce them," Richardson said. "If we unite the world behind the right carrots and sticks, and provide the North Koreans and the Iranians with face-saving ways to step back from the nuclear brink, we will prevail."

"We should recognize that US support for the Shah's repressive regime, and then for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s - and our silence when Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran - were wrong," the former diplomat added. "These and other mistakes on our part - like the many mistakes Iranians have made - have left wounds that are still deeply felt in both societies. Both we and the Iranians need to acknowledge this difficult shared history, and we need to work to get beyond it."

One the question of pulling troops out of Iraq, Richardson and Edwards were the only candidates endorsing plans to withdraw all American military forces from Iraq within short period and not leaving a residual force in place, as was proposed by Biden, Clinton, and Obama.

Richardson was unequivocal in his response.

"I believe that we need to withdraw all of our troops within six months," the Governor of New Mexico said. "That's all of our troops. Other than the customary Marine contingent at the embassy, I would not leave anyone behind. And if the embassy isn't safe, they're coming home too. No airbases. No troops in the Green Zone. No embedded soldiers training Iraqi forces, because we know what that means. It means our troops would still be out on patrol - with targets on their backs."

All of the candidates barring Biden and Clinton support a "world free of nuclear weapons" and reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles.

Biden noted the difficulty of implementing several of the recommendations and Clinton committed only to working "to implement the sensible near-term steps" described by Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn, and Perry.

Obama is the only candidate who does not oppose the Bush administration's plan to build a new generation of nuclear warheads under the "Reliable Replacement Warhead" scheme, only going so far as to say that he did not support "a premature decision to produce the RRW.

The candidates voiced unanimous support for making a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty a priority in their first-term in the White House.

Dodd, Edwards, and Richardson endorsed a multilateral international ban on space weapons with no qualifiers, but Clinton, Obama, and Biden failed to voice support for such a treaty.

Clinton committed herself only to constraining testing and deployment of weapons in space "as much as possible, while continuing to protect our satellites from any threats that remain."

Obama said a treaty would "take a long time to negotiate" and therefore suggested a "simpler and quicker" alternative: a "Code of Conduct for responsible space-faring nations."

All of the candidates proposals for a major expansion and acceleration of nuclear non-proliferation efforts to ensure that weapons of mass destruction and their essential ingredients do not fall into the wrong hands.

Obama and Richardson agreed on the need to deal with Russia, and Obama highlighted the delays and disputes that have hindered progress on securing Russian nuclear weapons and material.