The Nuke Deal: A Lot Left Unanswered

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il salutes soldiers marching in Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea in 2005.

KCNA-KNS / AFP / Getty

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Last April, President George W. Bush — not known as much of a micro-manager — personally rejiggered the seating chart at a White House luncheon welcoming Hu Jintao to Washington. Bush had been slated to sit next to Hu's wife, with First Lady Laura Bush next to the Chinese President at a separate table. But Bush wanted some extra face time with Hu, for one reason, says a senior White House adviser: "He wanted to stress to President Hu that he was absolutely committed to denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, but that he couldn't get that done by himself. He told Hu that he needed China's help, that it was the only way to move forward."

Late last night in Beijing, with a strong dose of the Chinese assistance Bush had sought, the U.S. and its negotiating partners in the so-called six-party talks apparently moved a step closer to getting North Korea to stand down on its nuclear weapons program. After a marathon negotiating session — a weary Christopher Hill, the lead U.S. negotiator, returned to his Beijing hotel at close to 3 a.m. Tuesday — the two sides agreed that within the next 60 days, North Korea would shut down "and seal" its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, where it produces the fissile material needed to build nuclear bombs, and readmit international weapons inspectors, whom Pyongyang had kicked out of the country four years ago. In return, North Korea will receive an initial shipment of 50,000 tons of desperately needed fuel oil (to run electrical power plants), with another one million tons coming later.

The Bush Administration has made it clear that an accord with Pyongyang is its central priority when it comes to East Asian diplomacy during the remainder of its term. "Everything else is secondary [in the region]," a senior White House official told TIME late last year. The White House not only hopes to ratchet down regional tensions, which spiked after Pyongyang's test of a nuclear bomb in October. The Administration also wants to use a deal with Pyongyang to intensify pressure on Iran, which the U.S. and its European allies accuse of having a clandestine nuclear weapons program (something Tehran has repeatedly denied).

But the tentative agreement, which has yet to be signed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, is less a comprehensive solution than it is a starting point — "the end of the beginning," as Hill put it at a press conference on Tuesday evening — and many questions remain to be settled. In the agreement Pyongyang agrees to shut down Yongbyon "for the purpose of eventual abandonment." But what, exactly, the trigger is, in terms of aid delivered to the North, for the regime to begin dismantling the reactor is not specified. The accord also speaks of future negotiating sessions that will work toward the normalization of relations between Pyongyang and its two enemies at the talks — the U.S. and Japan — as well as new security "mechanisms" in Northeast Asia. Does simply shutting Yongbyon get Pyongyang normalization? What about the financial sanctions that the U.S. imposed on North Korea in response to a range of allegedly illicit business activities, including the forgery of $100 bills? President Bush said recently that the sanctions would only be lifted if North Korea were to give up its nuclear program. Does what the North apparently agreed to in Beijing satisfy that requirement?

Then there are perhaps the most critical unknowns, questions presumably still on the table after the weekend's talks: What about Pyongyang's supposed alternate — and secret — program of uranium enrichment, another way to generate the fuel needed to build the bomb? Will the North agree to suspend activity on uranium enrichment as well, even though it now denies the program exists? Finally, what of the six to 10 nuclear bombs that the North already has in its arsenal, according to U.S. intelligence analysts? Does anyone believe Kim Jong Il will give those up? Hill said, "Nuclear programs have impoverished [his] country. [They] do not buy prestige or influence, they only buy isolation." But doesn't Kim believe that nukes are the ultimate guarantor to the survival of his regime?

Some of these questions will be answered in the next few days. Others will take months of further negotiation to sort out. Hill and his diplomatic colleagues in Beijing didn't get much sleep over the last few days. It's a feeling they'd better get used to.

With Simon Elegant in Beijing and Elaine Shannon in Washington