BRUSSELS -- After a 15-month hiatus, North Korea will return to Beijing in December for resumption of the China-brokered six-party talks with the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Rus- sia in attendance. Yet unless U.S. President George W. Bush makes a sharp turn of direction, prospects for a solution are bleak. The North is set to return to talks it abandoned in late 2005 following the so-called breakthrough with the Sept. 19 Joint Statement. In fact, the statement papered over an enormous division between the two main protagonists.
"Complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament" will be acceptable to Pyongyang only in exchange for an end to U.S. hostility and a new indigenous supply of electrical power.
For the North, any reference to an appropriate time for negotiations on a nuclear-power supply means "now," while the U.S. reads "never."