[Editorial] This time, the six-party talks need to bear fruit

The six-party talks are finally about to resume, for the first time in over a year, the last round of talks having been held in Beijing in September 2005. There hasn't been an official announcement yet, but those involved say the talks will resume on December 16 or 18.

The very fact that the six-party process is starting up again is meaningful. This time, the talks are the result of two rounds of direct dialogue between North Korea and the United States and work done in the interim on the part of China. The security climate surrounding the Korean peninsula during the 15 months the talks were interrupted made a major turn for the worse. The "September 19 Joint Declaration" signed by the six countries at the last talks was a framework for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, but the U.S. enacted financial sanctions immediately afterwards, and Pyongyang responded by testing missiles and a nuclear bomb. Instead of making the North surrender, pressure and the absence of dialogue made for an unstable security situation in the region. Having the talks going again allows multi-lateral discussion about the security of the Korean peninsula to prevent a new crisis from growing and maintain a framework that can facilitate finding ways to ease the current one.

That is not to say that it would be okay for this latest round of talks to be unproductive. This is going to be the last opportunity for North Korea and the Bush administration to end their hostile relationship and pursue a non-nuclear Korean peninsula. The Bush administration, for its part, lost recent mid-term elections because of the neocons' unilateralist foreign policy, and it needs to accomplish something in the time that remains. North Korea, in turn, needs to find a way to save its people from starvation. That being the case, each country involved - especially the U.S. and North Korea - need to approach the talks resolved to make substantial progress. This will require that Pyongyang and Washington take confidence-building measures. Washington needs to be flexible about financial sanctions, and Pyongyang needs to demonstrate that it wants to build confidence by suspending operations at its nuclear facilities.

Many obstacles remain to full implementation of the September 19, 2005 agreement, the ultimate goal of which is denuclearizing the peninsula and the normalization of U.S.-North Korea ties through the signing of a peace agreement. The nations participating in the six-party talks each have delicate differences of opinion about the various issues in question, such as sanctions, for example. These talks are important, however, because denuclearizing the Korean peninsula through negotiation could become a model for resolving the issue of Iran's nuclear program and the other diverse disputes in the international community. Everyone involved needs to refrain from doing anything that could hurt mutual confidence and strive to create a productive negotiating atmosphere so that the talks bear fruit.

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