Korea crisis awaits multistate push

The United States will not attend another round of talks with North Korea unless China hosts the meeting, unless Japan, South Korea, and possibly Russia are included, or if it confirms that the Kim Jong Il regime has reprocessed the cache of plutonium fuel rods that it has claimed to, diplomatic sources told the Monitor.

"A second round [of talks] is up to China," says a senior US diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "If the Chinese want to host it, we are ready. But we won't attend unless it is larger and genuinely multilateral."

The evolving US position on North Korea - and an evident eagerness in Seoul and Tokyo to join a process started by Beijing - builds on lengthy US efforts at a multilateral, diplomatic answer to the North's two nuclear programs. For months, Asian states had urged the US to engage in one-on-one talks with Pyongyang. But US officials say a nuclear Korea and the North's ability to sell fissionable material is serious enough to require a concert of Asian nations to pressure Mr. Kim, with China playing a central role.

Yet the position also suggests a disbelief in Washington that North Korean scientists could, undetected, reprocess some 8,000 spent fuel rods, as well as a willingness to overlook that claim as a negotiating position - though US officials have ordered an intelligence review to see if it is possible.

"The North Koreans sought to put as much on the table as possible [in the first meeting]," the diplomat says. "They are expert at slicing the salami and getting something for nothing. But that isn't going to happen this time.

"We expect something specific and concrete," and it must be "complete and verifiable," the source added. "The ball is in North Korea's court."

Talks with North Korea held in Beijing April 23 came via a diplomatic breakthrough by China after a seven-month nuclear standoff that has thrown Asia into a deepening security crisis. In Beijing, a North Korean official told US envoy James Kelly that his country possessed nuclear weapons - the first such admission. He also said that the North had "almost finished reprocessing" fuel rods that were unsealed after Kim kicked out UN inspectors on New Year's Day, according to sources familiar with details of the meeting.

Since then, Asian states and US officials have scrambled to decipher the meeting. New South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun visits President Bush next week in Washington for the first time - a significant moment for the two allies to coordinate efforts. All sides in the crisis are feeling what might be called a "big squeeze."

Time is a factor, since Kim could ostensibly turn his plutonium into weapons-grade material in months. The standoff, with the US not taking military options or sanctions off the table, also involves risky gamesmanship: North Korea says it will treat sanctions as an act of war.

Washington policymakers are in trench warfare over Korea, between Defense Department hard-liners and State Department moderates. Beijing, for its part, wants to find a way to continue talks without giving the impression to North Korea that it is publicly choosing between Washington and Pyongyang. South Korea's economy is hard hit and its policy of engagement is stymied - pending resolution of the nuclear issue. Japanese are feeling "angst" about the North, as one source put it, and worry that a long delay will force an aggressive new defense posture in Tokyo that will create fears in China.

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