ed Time to talk

US-N. Korea meeting should restore 6-way efforts

In the run-up to the second U.S.-North Korea contact in three months, major regional capitals are bristling with diplomatic activity. All of them are zeroing in on one possibility: will the bilateral meeting lead to the resumption of the six-party talks leaving a three-year hiatus behind?

Few in the know seem to be holding their breath and with good reason. Even before the two sides meet one-on-one in Geneva Monday, officials were busy reiterating their previous positions. Washington made it clear Pyongyang should take four ``pre-steps,” while the communist regime ― through the mouth of no less a figure than its “Dear Leader” ― called for the resumption of multilateral talks ``without preconditions.”

Why are they meeting, then? To just show they are doing something, one might ask. Sadly, it seems so in more than a few ways.

Next year will prove to be very busy one for all of the countries concerned. In the United States, Russia and South Korea, there will be presidential elections. China will see a new leader and even Japan might do so, given the average term of office of recent prime ministers. The busiest of all, however, will be North Korea, which has set 2012 as the year for turning the starving, poverty-stricken country into a ``strong and prosperous” one.

The Barack Obama administration, which holds the key to all this process, seems to want to just ``manage” the situation at the present level and not let the isolationist regime aggravate it through furthering its nuclear programs and/or committing additional military provocation against South Korea.

Obama’s change of his special envoy on North Korea with a lower-level official who has little experience of dealing with Pyongyang is but one evidence backing up such assumptions.

The incumbent South Korean administration has not been eager to resolve the nuclear stalemate from the start, repeating it ``won’t talk for just the sake of talk.” Nor has Japan changed much from its original position of linking the talks to the issue of its kidnapped citizens by North Korean agents. It will be an uphill struggle for China to persuade all these half-hearted partners singlehandedly. If the current situation continues, North Korea may pronounce itself a formal nuclear power, complete with vehicles for long-distance delivery ― as early as next year.

In retrospect, some skeptics say, it was Pyongyang’s initial and ultimate goal that no amount of carrots and sticks could have stopped it.

We think it quite a dangerous ― and irresponsible ― presumption. There were at least two moments when countries involved could have changed the development had they tackled the matter with more sincerity and in ways they could give full confidence to one another in 1994 and 2005.

It is useless now to engage in finger-pointing for these lost opportunities. The only thing that’s clear is, the longer the denuclearization process, the costlier it will become. It’s time to talk and act.