Talks only first step towards elusive North Korea pact

By CAROL GIACOMO

After refusing direct negotiations for months, President George W Bush's administration has joined North Korea in compromising on a format for new talks.

However, the substance of the discussions - not the structure - is what is most important, and it is far from clear that Washington and Pyongyang will be willing or able to reach an agreement on nuclear and other issues.

Wednesday's announcement that after months of brewing crisis the United States and North Korea had finally agreed to meet in Beijing, possibly as early as next week, was welcomed by US experts who had long argued dialogue was essential.

"I think that the opportunity to engage on the substance holds the promise of advancing our security interests and the interests of our friends and allies in the region," said Dan Poneman, a former National Security Council official now with the Scowcroft Group, a consultancy.

However, deep doubts persist about whether North Korea would abandon its nuclear capability as the US demands, and whether the administration would be willing to make a deal with a communist regime that many officials find morally repugnant.

"The North Koreans are not going to give up their nuclear weapons programme either as a result of threats or blandishments, and the extremists on both sides -- some Clinton people and some Bush people -- who think that, are wrong," said Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre.

He said if Washington wanted North Korea to give up its nuclear programme, it would have to do everything it could to isolate the state.

The nuclear standoff erupted last October when the North admitted it had a secret programme to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear arms, in addition to a plutonium programme frozen under a 1994 agreement with the United States.

To the concern of many members of Congress and experts, the Bush team -- playing down the problem as it focused on war against Iraq -- for months refused Pyongyang's request for direct talks as it moved toward full-scale nuclear production.

The Americans insisted instead on multinational discussions to include South Korea, Japan, China and maybe others as well.

With the major fighting in Iraq over and a US-led coalition in control in the country, attention has shifted back to the North Korean powder keg.

Washington still wants the other key regional parties -- South Korea and Japan -- to join the talks soon, but the announced format would involve only three countries -- the United States, North Korea and China.

Much public attention has focused on the North's decision to abandon its insistence on direct, bilateral talks with the US but experts said Washington also compromised.

"This is more than bilateral but less than the full constellation of players" Bush demanded, one analyst noted.

China is seen as nudging North Korea toward the negotiating table through a temporary halt in fuel supplies and diplomatic pressure. But analysts said it will likely only be a bystander not a major participant in upcoming talks.

The swift US victory in Iraq prompted North Korea's decision to accede to negotiations and also influenced China and Russia to lean on Pyongyang, they said.

Just how a deal might be structured remains unclear.

The US House of Representatives, asserting a hard line, voted last week to deny Pyongyang two lightwater nuclear power reactors promised in the 1994 pact under which the North agreed to abandon its nuclear arms programme. The Senate has to act on this before it becomes effective.

The White House on Wednesday reiterated that Pyongyang must scrap its nuclear programmes in a "verifiable and irreversible manner" and only then will Washington offer its promised "bold initiative" of economic and political benefits to the North.

Sokolski said the only way to do that would be to get the UN Security Council to threaten to isolate North Korea.

If the UN balked, then Washington must rally a "coalition of the willing" to squeeze Pyongyang by cracking down on North Korean drug sales, counterfeiting and lucrative South Korean business deals -- all sources of hard currency that keep the economically-devastated regime afloat, he said.

Within the Bush administration, some officials are prepared to play that kind of hardball and some are not.

- REUTERS