COMMENDABLY, the Bush administration is working to undo one of its worst blunders - the abandonment of a 1994 Clinton administration deal that kept North Korea from producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. In a clear step back from its past confrontational rhetoric, the administration agreed to a February 2007 deal that could lead to the dismantling of all of North Korea's nuclear weapons and programs. That deal stalled, but recent talks with Pyongyang promise to put it back on track.
These are not easy negotiations. Each side believes the other has failed to live up to earlier commitments. Both need to be patient. This is also an undertaking that deserves bipartisan support from Congress and from the presidential candidates.
The 2007 deal called for parallel actions. So, after Russian deliveries of heavy fuel oil and energy assistance from South Korea were not delivered on schedule, the North stopped disabling its sole nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. A more serious snag occurred when the Bush administration demanded an accounting of components North Korea may have acquired for a uranium enrichment program and details on how much Pyongyang helped Syria with a suspected nuclear reactor, which Israel supposedly destroyed in a Sept. 2007 air attack.
North Korea complained that Washington was too slow in lifting economic sanctions imposed under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Regime officials, who insist their political aim is to end the enmity between their country and the United States, have also asked for signs the administration will keep its promise to remove North Korea from the list of states that sponsor terrorism.
The immediate US objective must be to get the Yongbyon reactor disabled. Once North Korea does that, no more plutonium could be produced there for at least a year. Toward that end, the US negotiators have wisely put off resolving questions about the North's proliferation of nuclear materials to other countries, or about components it may have acquired for uranium enrichment. Instead, they have focused on procuring accurate operating records for Yongbyon. Those records could allow US specialists to gauge just how much plutonium North Korea has produced - the key to assuring denuclearization.
It will take some time to reach that objective. It will take more trading of quid pro quos - a staple of statecraft that President Bush has for too long disdained. But there was never any other practical way to remove nuclear weapons from North Korea.
