Words, not tantrums, to resolve Korean crisis

Ignoring the president's change of heart, administration hard-liners still balk at turning his words into a specific proposal for the second round of six-nation talks slated to begin this month. That is sure to alienate Japan and South Korea, who have been pressing the United States to negotiate in earnest.

The North has begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel that it removed from its reactor in 1994. It has refueled and restarted its reactor at Yongbyon. It is also making gas centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium, another way to make bombs.

No one outside the inner circle in Pyongyang knows for sure whether it has finished reprocessing or already made a nuclear weapon or two with the plutonium it reprocessed before 1992. North Korean officials have made contradictory statements about how far they have gone, but they have been clearer about their willingness to negotiate away their nuclear program.

In the August round of six-party talks, North Korea's Kim Il Yong told other negotiators, "It is not our goal to have nuclear weapons," and spelled out how his country would first refreeze and dismantle its nuclear sites. Pyongyang no longer insists on a nonaggression pact as a first step. Instead, Kim said, it seeks an agreement in principle in which it would "clarify its will to dismantle its nuclear program if the United States makes clear its will to give up its hostile policy toward the DPRK (North Korea)."

Kim spelled out a sequence of simultaneous steps Pyongyang would take with Washington. It "will allow the refreeze of our nuclear facility and nuclear substance and monitoring and inspection of them from the time the United States has concluded a nonaggression treaty with the DPRK and compensated for the loss of electricity."

"Nonaggression treaty" is the North's infelicitous choice of words for a written pledge that the United States will not attack it, not interfere in its internal affairs, and not impede its economic development by continuing sanctions or discouraging aid and investment from South Korea and Japan. Next, it will settle the missile issue -- "put on ice its missile test-firing and stop its [missile] export" -- once the United States and Japan open diplomatic relations. Then, it "will dismantle [its] nuclear facility from the time the [light-water reactors promised under the Agreed Framework] are completed."

Does Pyongyang mean what it says? The surest way to find out is diplomatic give-and-take. That's why Tokyo and Seoul have urged Washington to make a counteroffer. That requires the Bush administration to do something it has not yet done -- decide what it wants most and what it would offer in return.

A US agreement in principle to end enmity and improve political and economic relations makes sense if the North freezes its plutonium and uranium programs while negotiations proceed. Pyongyang has also asked for the resumption of heavy fuel oil shipments and an increase in food aid, which Washington cut back this year. Even some electricity from South Korea is not too much to provide in return.

As desirable as they are, inspections take time to arrange. They can wait. While Pyongyang would do well to let inspectors back into Yongbyon soon, US intelligence can monitor a freeze of the North's plutonium plants there by satellites and other technical means. That is not the case with enrichment sites whose location is unknown.

According to US intelligence, however, North Korea will not be ready to produce much highly enriched uranium until "middecade," allowing time to arrange for access.

Dismantling comes next. The United States initially demanded that the North eliminate its enrichment program before it would even hold talks, but that made no sense: the last thing we would want is for dismantling to take place without inspectors to witness it, as happened in Iraq.

Pyongyang's missile program can be dealt with in parallel. The first priority is what the North offered in Beijing -- a ban on missile test launches and exports of missile technology. Dismantling of missiles and production sites would then have to be negotiated.

Now that both Pyongyang and Washington have wasted many months throwing tantrums and flexing their muscles, it's time they try words to resolve the crisis in Korea.

Leon V. Sigal is director of the Northeast Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council and author of "Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea."