What do the North Koreans really want?

WASHINGTON — The latest statements out of North Korea appear to be telegraphing Pyongyang's next set of provocative moves. It has threatened further ballistic missile tests, another nuclear test, and steps to acquire its own civilian nuclear capabilities unless the United Nations "apologizes" for its punitive statement against the April missile launch.

In the past, North Korea's threatening actions were always explained as a tactic to get the attention of the United States and draw Washington into bilateral talks. But the new U.S. administration has already signaled its willingness to have high-level negotiations with Pyongyang through special envoy Stephen Bosworth. Yet the North continues to threaten and refuses to come to the table. So what does it really want? Three things: • First, as a former State Department official who worked on the Clinton-era negotiations stated at a meeting in Washington earlier this month, I think the North wants agreements with the U.S. that are "election-proof." In other words, it wants agreements that will outlast a change of presidencies.

The North has been burned once before: In 2000, Pyongyang's leadership saw themselves at the threshold of a new relationship with the U.S. that dissipated quite rapidly when the Bush administration came to power. Arguably (and ironically), the Bush administration ended its eight years in office trying to make agreements that were permanent, including the removal of North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. It is more complex to put a country back on the list than to take it off. • Second, the North wants negotiations not about denuclearization, but about arms control. Their model is to turn the six-party talks into a bilateral U.S.-North Korean nuclear arms reduction negotiation in which the North is accorded a status as a nuclear-weapons state that agrees to mutual nuclear-arms reductions (not elimination) and confidence-building measures. The North frequently refers to the U.S.-Soviet strategic arms control negotiations as its empirical referent.