I favour the Obama administration's efforts to reach out to everybody. You negotiate with everybody. You make peace not with your friends but with your enemies. That reaching out to negotiate does not in any way negate accountability; indeed, it increases the need for accountability. If you're going to reach out, then you have to hold accountable those to whom you are reaching out.
The great mistake of the 1930s was not negotiating with the Nazi regime, with Hitler, with Mussolini, with Japan, but in not holding them accountable, particularly the German government, for what it had promised it would do, threatened it would do. There just wasn't enough accountability. There was too much legitimization of the Nazi regime by other governments. So I see no inconsistency between the Obama administration reaching out and also holding a stick.
I think a metaphor for what the Obama administration might likely do was how it dealt with the Somali pirates when they captured an American citizen. They negotiated, they talked, but when it became clear there was a substantial risk that an American citizen might be killed, they acted. So with one hand always extend the olive branch of peace, always negotiate, always talk; but action must be kept as an option, and holding governments accountable for their own talk. After all, if we're talking, that means we take words seriously. If we take words seriously, then we must take the words of those with whom we are negotiating and extending an arm of discussion and hold them accountable for their words.