US bides time on N. Korean crisis

As North Korea's Kim Jong Il moves to create a nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea is - by default - taking the lead this week as diplomatic firefighter.

In recent days, President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have ruled out both a US military strike and tougher economic sanctions, yet remain firm in rejecting direct negotiations with Pyongyang.

With the US taking a hard line, and Asian partners largely at odds, current options for a quick and simple solution seem bleak. That leaves South Korea scrambling for help from China, Russia, and Japan. Thursday, North Korea's chief economic ally, China, agreed to use diplomatic means to defuse the crisis - without giving specifics. Today, South Korea will send an envoy to urge Moscow to use its recently resurrected ties to Pyongyang to persuade it to back down.

"We are in the next phase of this crisis now," argues Scott Snyder of the Asia Foundation in Seoul. "What Washington really needs is time - time to consider a plan, time to work with the incoming government in Seoul. They also need the North to step back and give the US some room to talk with them directly. They need the North to say something like, 'we won't start up our experimental reactor, we have found another source of electricity.' "

The Bush administration won't submit to North Korea's game of nuclear blackmail, insisting that, unlike a military strategy toward Iraq, diplomacy is the best way to persuade the North not to develop as many as four to six nuclear weapons in the coming year. Tuesday, the North said it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - the same threat that 10 years ago forced the US to consider military action in Korea.

In the past month, the isolated, cash-poor Stalinist state of North Korea - ruled by a crafty and eccentric leader who is revered as a god and who has used his nuclear program as a bargaining chip - has suddenly come to international stage center. Last week, the North expelled UN nuclear inspectors after 10 years there, opened the seals of containers that house some 8,000 spent plutonium fuel rods, and moved to restart a five-megawatt reactor that the Clinton White House once considered bombing. Kicking out international observers has long been viewed by the US as a "red line" that North Korea could not cross without major repercussions - since it means the plutonium can no longer be accounted for.

While states in Asia desire a peaceful settlement with North Korea, just what an effective diplomatic solution with that country will look like is vexingly unclear, experts say. Several days ago, for example, the US seemed to initiate a policy of economic sanctions and "tailored containment" toward the North. Yet after South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and incoming President Roh Moo- hyun issued a sharp public disagreement with Washington, it seem that even the Bush team is backing off that plan.

Clarity on the diplomatic path out of this crisis may emerge in the coming week. On Monday, nuclear inspectors gather for an emergency meeting with the UN International Atomic Energy Agency board (IAEA). That is likely to be followed by a UN Security Council meeting, and meetings in Washington between US, Japan, and South Korean officials. After that, US envoy James Kelly is scheduled to depart for South Korea.

Currently, North Korea wants to talk only with Washington. South Korea, ironically, wants to talk only with North Korea, to restart its "sunshine policy" of engagement. And the US, meanwhile, wants to talk with the North only through a third party in Seoul.

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