WASHINGTON -- The six-party talks concluded in Beijing last month demonstrated incremental progress in resolving the 16-month crisis over North Korea's nuclear-weapons programs. For the causal observer, this outcome may not make sense. If the United States, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia agree that a nuclear North Korea is unacceptable, and North Korea appears willing to freeze its program in return for help from the outside world, then a deal should be workable, yes?
Well, not exactly. Pyongyang's proposal to freeze its program in return for food, fuel and security from the world constitutes the equivalent of a burglar selling back the stolen goods taken from your house, and not admitting that he committed the crime. The origins of the current crisis are exactly what the reclusive regime has been glossing over in the recently concluded talks -- the existence of a second nuclear program using highly enriched uranium.
This HEU program constituted a clear violation of an earlier 1994 nonproliferation agreement with the U.S. to freeze the North's plutonium-based nuclear weapons program. After the revelations of this second program in October 2002, the North Koreans denuded the 1994 agreement and fast-forwarded the reprocessing of atomic-bomb-grade plutonium at the previously frozen and internationally monitored facilities.