In Korea crisis, China takes lead

That China has pulled off a diplomatic coup, engineering three-way talks with the US and North Korea to resolve the crisis over Kim Jong Il's nuclear programs, is a major surprise in Asia.

For the first time in memory, experts say, Beijing is taking an active and bold step to address a serious conflict in this part of the world, bridging what seemed a dangerous impasse between the US and North Korea over how to handle the latter's nuclear ambitions.

The result is a "great powers" concert between the US and China that is highly unusual given their historic political distance - and suggests months of hard work under the surface by Beijing, likely dating to the meeting of President Bush and China's former President Jiang Zemin in Crawford, Texas last fall. US-China-North Korea talks are described as significant both for the speed with which they will take place - next week in Beijing - and also for the absence of two central players in the region, Japan and South Korea.

"South Korea and Japan are missing because North Korea will feel too much pressure if two US allies are also allowed at the table," says Zhang Lian Gui, head of international relations at the Communist Party School in Beijing.

How substantive the talks will be is unclear. The White House is unlikely to back down from its position that the North must dismantle both its enriched uranium and plutonium-based programs. This would require verification, something that Dr. Zhang says North Korea will not allow, even if Mr. Kim could be induced to abandon nuclear options.

"It is hard to imagine that anyone will be happy without verification," says Scott Snyder of the Asia Foundation in Seoul.

"We are just at the start of a long, long march that will be very difficult," says Dr. Zhang, who thinks that Kim is unlikely to allow verification. Zhang predicts the three-way format will increasingly evolve into bilateral talks between the US and North Korea. The US negotiator is reported to be Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly.

Since October, when North Korea admitted a secret uranium program to Mr. Kelly, the region has been in the worst security crisis in a decade. An angry North demanded direct talks with the US; the US insisted upon talks drawing in Asian states with an interest in the outcome. Meanwhile, the North abandoned the nonproliferation treaty, kicked out UN inspectors, tested missiles, and is now poised to reprocess hundreds of spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium.

A giant new wrinkle has been Iraq. The rapidity with which US forces overwhelmed Baghdad, and the fears this reportedly caused in the Stalinist North - one of the three "axis of evil" states named by President Bush - has brought new thinking in Pyongyang, experts say.

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