SOUTH KOREA: As another round of six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme approaches, a rift has developed between the United States and the other parties over whether the North would retain the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator, brushed aside those differences on Tuesday, telling reporters at a briefing in Washington that they were "not a show-stopper".
Bush administration officials have stated repeatedly that North Korea cannot be trusted with any type of nuclear facility, even for power generation or scientific purposes, because it has cheated so many times on past promises not to build nuclear weapons.
Among the six nations involved in the talks, only Japan stands solidly with the US position.
South Korea, Russia and China all support to various degrees North Korea's claim that civilian nuclear power is its right as a sovereign nation.
Bolstering its arguments, North Korea points to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's Article IV, which upholds "the inalienable right of all parties to the treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination".
North Korea kicked UN nuclear inspectors out in 2002 and withdrew from the treaty. Diplomats familiar with the talks believe that North Korea has made a strategic decision to return to the treaty, but only if the US gives ground on civilian nuclear energy.
"Legalistically, they are making a valid argument. The North Koreans have been quite smart in the way they've done this," said Daniel Pinkston, an analyst with the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.
The six-party talks are supposed to resume next week in Beijing. Two weeks of intensive negotiations broke down on August 7th, after the US and North Korea locked horns on the question of civilian nuclear power.
In an unusually public airing of differences, South Korea last week appeared to split with the Bush administration. A key official, Chung Dong Young, who is responsible for relations with the North, said Pyongyang had a "basic right" to nuclear energy for civilian purposes.
Peter Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute, a San Francisco think tank, said he believed that there might be a "creative solution", such as having North and South Korea jointly handle civilian nuclear energy.
There is little disagreement between the United States and its allies that North Korea's five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon must be shut down.
That reactor, which purportedly was to be used to produce electricity, has been basically operated as a factory for weapons-grade plutonium.