North Korea faces united front

However, the US rejected a North Korean demand for a bilateral nonaggression treaty, according to a report by Japan's Kyodo news agency.

The Chinese hosts designed the seating at the talks to take place in a circle, alphabetically, which put the US and North Korea delegations next to each other. (North Korea was seated according to its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.)

The US has indicated it wants an immediate and verifiable end to the North's nuclear programs; the North wants its security guaranteed, and feels it has the time to draw out talks, say experts.

The Beijing meeting takes place nearly 11 months after a fateful visit by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, who represents the US here, to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. During that October visit, North Korean officials admitted to Mr. Kelly that they had a secret "enriched uranium" program - something that initiated a security crisis in Northeast Asia.

Since October, North Korea ejected UN inspectors, stated that it is reprocessing plutonium fuel rods, and has withdrawn from the NPT.

The question in Washington and in Asia, as the current drama has unfolded, has been: Is North Korea bluffing, conducting skillful brinkmanship designed to achieve a whole new set of security guarantees and economic benefits - or does the secretive and closed regime actually want to develop a nuclear option that would give it a whole new dimension of military capability?

Hosting the late summer talks in this city is a diplomatic first for China, which has often been content to "sit in the shadows," as a Western diplomat puts it.

"The Chinese have gone all out, they are putting a lot of effort and prestige on the line here, in hopes that the parties keep talking," the diplomat says. "It has not been easy for Beijing to work itself into a position between the DPRK and the US. That has taken a lot of effort, in the Chinese view."

In a briefing by a US official in Washington last Friday, the US expressed thanks to China for the effort, though the official also noted that the talks, "were in China's national interest" as well. Both China and South Korea are concerned that no violent destabilization take place on the Korean Peninsula.

The talks shed no new light on whether North Korea already possesses nuclear weapons. "North Korea did not say it had nuclear weapons and nor did it say that it didn't have nuclear weapons," a Japanese official said.

The US intelligence community suspects that the North may already possess enough plutonium to make one or two nuclear bombs.

The North has also been pursuing biological weapons research and development and is believed to possess a sizable stockpile of chemical weapons, according to GlobalSecurity.org's website.

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