WASHINGTON -- Last year, U.S. President Bill Clinton spent his final months in office trying to cobble together a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Today, the Middle East teeters on the edge of the largest-scale violence since the Persian Gulf War and the greatest involving Israel since its invasion of Lebanon nearly 20 years ago. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was unwilling or unable to accept the olive branch offered by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and now confronts Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a man known primarily for his belligerence.

Something similar may well be occurring on the Korean Peninsula. For reasons that may never be known, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il took nearly a year and a half to respond to the peace overture made by Clinton through his emissary, former Defense Secretary William Perry. Now Kim confronts a less accommodating U.S. president in George W. Bush.

Even more importantly, it is virtually impossible to imagine that the North Korean leader will ever encounter a South Korean counterpart as forthcoming as the current South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung. South Korea will hold a presidential election next year, and it is almost assured that the next occupant of the Blue House will not take the same political risks in the pursuit of North-South rapprochement that his predecessor has.