Talking About Talks

U.S. State Department emissaries usually couch their messages in diplomatic niceties. But there was little sugar-coating in Seoul last week when the administration's pointman on arms control, John Bolton, delivered a blistering denunciation of North Korea's Kim Jong Il, labeling Kim a tyrannical rogue state leader. "For many in North Korea," he said, "life is a hellish nightmare." Bolton also warned that Kim was using the threat of weapons of mass destruction—namely, a nuclear weapons program—to blackmail the international community with "extortionist demands." The White House signed off on Bolton's rhetoric. According to an administration official: "The point of the speech was to stick it to Kim Jong Il personally."

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Intriguingly, Bolton's blast came as weeks of torturous talks about talks finally yielded some results. North Korea agreed Friday to six-party negotiations on dismantling its nuclear program with the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. That was a major concession: Pyongyang has long demanded bilateral talks with Washington. Uncharacteristically, Pyongyang ignored Bolton's harsh rhetoric. An official at the Blue House, South Korea's presidential residence, explains that Pyongyang, "with such a strong wind blowing at it," had no choice but to join a more crowded negotiating table.

China, North Korea's chief ally, played an unusually high-profile diplomatic role in recent weeks. For its part, Washington seems to have settled for a classic sticks-and-carrots approach. Bolton spearheads an international effort to crack down on North Korea's arms and drugs trade. Washington has also pushed to get the United Nations Security Council to take up North Korea's nuclear violations, a step that could lead to sanctions against North Korea. But the Bush Administration has always held open the door for talks, as long as they were multilateral. For now, at least, Bush appears to have gotten his way.