HOW HE SEES IT Bush finally accepts North Korea reality

By DANIEL SNEIDER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
In danger of finding itself isolated from its own allies, the Bush administration finally decided it was time to talk to North Korea.
Given a little longer leash by the White House, the State Department team showed up at the latest round of six-party talks in Beijing with a detailed, seven-page proposal. It laid out in specific terms what steps North Korea should take to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, and what Washington and its allies were prepared to do in return.
Even where the substance of U.S. demands were unchanged, the language was softened. Chief negotiator James Kelly also held closed-door bilateral talks with the North Koreans, something the administration has balked at doing previously. For the first time since contacts began more than a year and half ago, there was evidence of real give and take.
It remains to be seen if the North Korean regime is ready to end its nuclear program, even with a package of inducements on the table.
The greatest value of the new U.S. stance is to convince our partners in the region that Pyongyang, not Washington, is the obstacle to a diplomatic solution. After the last round of talks, as I reported in this column, both China and South Korea complained privately that Washington wasn't prepared to negotiate.
"Now, either North Korea agrees to a settlement or it rejects the path of compromise and thereby unites East Asia in support of the U.S. position," says Stanford's Robert Madsen. Only with such unity, he argues, is it possible to mount the economic sanctions and military pressure to force North Korea into line. "It is the right policy, two years late," says Madsen.
Inside the administration, the wars over Korean policy are not over. Vice President Dick Cheney and the Pentagon still believe only regime change will end the nuclear threat. Someone in that camp tried to spin perceptions last week, telling reporters that North Korea had threatened during the talks to test a nuclear weapon. Actually, North Korean negotiators told Kelly they feared their own hard-liners would push for testing if they could not reach a deal.
Bush's sympathies lie with his own hard-liners. But, for now, he is more concerned with re-election. Democratic candidate John Kerry has hammered away at the administration for refusing to negotiate while North Korea built an arsenal of perhaps six to eight nuclear warheads.
Even more than election politics, the U.S. shift is driven by the increasingly public divide with its own allies. After proclaiming that the six-party talks had isolated North Korea, the United States was actually becoming the odd man out.
South Korean officials believe the North will trade its nuclear ambitions for security guarantees and economic assistance. They point to market reforms in the communist North as evidence of change. And the April parliamentary elections delivered a majority for the new Uri party, which backs President Roh Moo-hyun's engagement policy toward the North.
Kelly's new proposal closely resembles a three-stage freeze plan put forward at the last round of talks by South Korea. "Washington is now more sensitive to Seoul's concerns," a South Korean official told me. "That is a positive sign."
Skepticism
The Chinese also share Seoul's assessment of North Korea. More crucially, the Chinese are openly skeptical of Washington's claims that the North Koreans have already completed a secret enriched uranium path to nuclear weapons, alongside the existing plutonium program.
What tipped the scale was Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's quick summit on May 22 with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The Japanese have been a staunch ally of the United States, opposing concessions to Pyongyang. But Koizumi came back convinced that Kim understood that the economic benefit of giving up his nuclear card could outweigh the security benefits of keeping it. He forcefully made this point with Bush at the Group of 8 summit on June 8.
The Chinese, South Koreans and Japanese may be wrong about North Korea. But we need to test that proposition before we can go down any other road. Finally, it seems, driven by Iraq and the elections, President Bush has come to accept that reality. Let's hope it is not too late.
XSneider is foreign affairs columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.