The third round of multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear programme opened yesterday on a more substantive and hopeful note than in previous encounters between the six states involved. North and South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States are attending the talks in Beijing.
They heard a US offer to link incentives and security guarantees to North Korean undertakings about listing, disabling and monitoring its programme to develop nuclear arms.
The four-day meeting could inaugurate a more constructive engagement in coming months if the North Koreans can be convinced to respond positively to the US offer. There are stringent conditions attached to it, which will test the regime's pride to the limits. Hints that the US may be willing to give an undertaking not to attack North Korea if it complies would very much ease the atmosphere. The North Koreans insist that the only reason they have a nuclear arms programme is to dispel such an attack, while the US argues it is ready to proliferate weapons of mass destruction unless it is compelled not to.
The severe food and resource shortages in North Korea are a hidden but potent factor in these negotiations. There is a readiness to supply heavy oil and food and investment to shore up North Korea's economy if it shows a willingness to enter such a process. All the neighbouring states involved have good reason to avoid a crisis which could precipitate a collapse of its regime and would prefer a soft landing in which it gradually adjusts to greater openness. The US has become more willing to deal with the issues through this shared process and has now had the opportunity to put its proposals directly to the North Korean leadership in a definite sign of progress.
The long term aim is for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula more capable of mutual interaction politically, socially and economically. It is a difficult task, given the troubled state of North Korea. But the recent election in South Korea clearly confirmed this is the preferred policy of its electorate. The government led by President Roh Moo-hyun faced its own crisis this week following the beheading of Kim Sun-il, the South Korean translator kidnapped in Iraq. His government quite correctly refused to withdraw its 670 medical and engineering personnel or to refuse to send the 3,000 troops it has committed. The president has to take full account of the 37,500 US troops in South Korea and the security guarantee they represent, whatever its political reservations about US policy in Iraq.