Word: koreans
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...hasn't responded yet. But the hope is that his envoys will do so next week, when six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear program are expected to reconvene in Beijing after a 13-month hiatus. Nobody is sure if it's the South Korean offer that has brought the North back to the bargaining table; nor is it certain that Kim will accept a deal that could effectively give Seoul the power to turn off the lights in Pyongyang. More important, nobody knows if Kim has decided to come back to the table to negotiate away his nukes...
...Despite vowing that it wouldn't offer Kim sweeteners to return to the bargaining table, Washington has reacted with cautious praise?in Seoul last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the South Korean plan "a very creative idea." It's not clear, though, what penalties Kim might face if he doesn't take the deal, or pushes for more baubles, such as new power plants. Rice asserted that the North must make "a strategic decision" to give up its nuclear weapons. But, asks Balbina Hwang, a North Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., "What...
...core issue of denuclearizing North Korea. South Korea has recently offered to provide huge amounts of electricity if Pyongyang will give up its nuclear arsenal, now estimated by U.S. intelligence at roughly eight weapons. The U.S. has been less specific about incentives, but seems comfortable with the South Korean offer, and has promised security assurances to North Korea if it comes into compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and similar agreements with the U.S. and South Korea. U.S. President George W. Bush has also made a point of voicing less hostility to the Kim Jong Il regime of late...
...that said, the odds are still against a breakthrough deal. North Korea's problems go way beyond electricity; for a start, its economy is still only about half its 1980s size. That makes it doubtful that it will trade in its best bargaining chip?nuclear weapons?for a South Korean offer that, while generous and serious, nonetheless addresses only one aspect of the Stalinist state's overall needs...
...Still missing from the basic approach to negotiations is any sense that the core problem here is the nature of the North Korean regime. To be sure, the Bush Administration would agree that Kim's Stalinist government is the fundamental cause of the nuclear crisis. But Bush seems to entertain unrealistic ideas about replacing that regime, rather than more pragmatically trying to prod it into undertaking major structural change...