The nuclear talks

The latest round of nuclear negotiations with North Korea will pause briefly this weekend after making little headway. Both sides seem distracted -- Washington with the restoration of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Pyongyang with the inauguration of President Kim Jong Il. If they are to make progress, they need to focus on what they can agree on.

Instead, both sides seem to be contemplating moves that could derail diplomacy. The U.S. is discussing resumption of the provocative Team Spirit military exercises with South Korea. The North is talking about refueling its nuclear reactor to generate more spent fuel for bomb-making.

Reassuring the North is the only way to induce it to stop building a nuclear deterrent. China showed the way by reaffirming its military alliance with the North while urging it to become nuclear-free. But the U.S. is slow to learn the lesson. A week ago, Adm. Ronald Zlatoper, the U.S. commander in the Pacific, compared the presence of an American carrier task force off Korea to the situation in Haiti and said, "some very strong military force can influence diplomacy." A few days later, North Korea's Defense Ministry reacted sharply, saying it would never accept special inspections of military sites. Fortunately, the North's negotiators have not taken that stance.

Washington needs to look for the logic in Pyongyang's negotiating position. North Korea has been willing to freeze its nuclear program, but is reluctant to roll back that program irreversibly until it is reassured and rewarded.

The most difficult issue for the North is allowing special inspections to determine how much nuclear material it may have diverted in the past. The U.S. is right to defer this. The North is also reluctant to part with the spent fuel rods now in cooling ponds. But it appears willing to store the rods in dry casks to keep them from corroding. It also seems ready to cease construction of its reactors and seal its reprocessing facilities.

In return, the U.S. could open diplomatic ties and arrange to replace the North's nuclear reactors with new ones less susceptible to bomb-making. It could also help find ways to meet the North's more immediate electricity needs.

The sooner the two sides stop brandishing threats and start reassuring each other, the sooner they will find ways to say yes.

-- The New York Times