State Dep’t: North Korea Will Return to Six-Party Talks

There is a catch:  North Korea’s willingness depends on the outcome of bilateral talks, meaning that North Korea will demand (and probably get) bilateral concessions before it returns to demand multilateral concessions … in exchange for a lot of dry air.

A friendly reminder:  we’re no closer to actual North Korean disarmament than we were in December 2006, the last time this cycle began.  I’ll boldly predict that these talks won’t end any differently.

Hat tip to a friend; link tomorrow.

Update:   Link and a quote here, from South Korea’s official Yonhap News Service:

While meeting with visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao earlier in the day, Kim “expressed our readiness to hold multilateral talks, depending on the outcome of the DPRK-U.S. talks,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a dispatch from Pyongyang. DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  [….]

As it tends to do when it’s trying to appeal to our gullible side, North Korea is back to insisting that it wanted to disarm all along:

“Our efforts to attain the goal of denuclearizing the peninsula remain unchanged,” Kim said. “The denuclearization of the peninsula was the behest of President Kim Il-sung,” North Korea’s late founder and Kim Jong-il’s father.

And yet for the first time in known North Korean history, the Great Leaders’ wishes were not carried out.  I’d be interested in knowing if this interpretation of Kim Il Sung’s testament is also being published in North Korea’s domestic propaganda system, or if all of this is strictly for external consumption.  North Korea is hinting at what its first round of demands will be, just for returning to talks:

“The hostile relations between the DPRK and the United States should be converted into peaceful ties through the bilateral talks without fail,” he said, according to the KCNA.

Meaning some form of aid or even more likely, the relaxation of sanctions that are probably starting to hurt.

The State Department offered a sedate response:

As we’ve said before, we and our Six-Party Partners want North Korea to engage in a dialogue that leads to complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through irreversible steps.

The U.S. remains willing to engage North Korea bilaterally within the framework of the Six Party process to convince North Korea to take the path of complete denuclearization.

The United States is conducting close coordination with our allies and partners involved in the Six-Party Talks, aimed at achieving the full denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The United States remains committed to the goal of the September 2005 Joint Statement: The Verifiable Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a Peaceful Manner.

There is consensus among the five parties that the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula remains the core objective and essential goal of our engagement with North Korea, that the Six-Part process is the best mechanism for achieving denuclearization, and that we remain committed to the full implementation of UNSCRs 1718 AND 1874.  [State Dep’t Press Release, Oct. 5, 2009]

The words are sedate, but going so far as to issue a mass press release at 7:29 in the evening, Washington time suggests irrational exuberance.  Observe the non-matching fonts.  Someone edited this in a big hurry.  State will probably now send Special Envoy Stephen “Bud” Bosworth to Pyongyang, though it denies having made a firm decision to do so yet.
If there is any chance at all for this Administration to achieve any progress through diplomacy, and I’m skeptical that that’s possible, it will have to remain mindful of this — talks are only talks.  We’ve had plenty of them with the North Koreans in the last 20 years; meanwhile, the North’s nuclear capabilities have only grown.  The North is very good at temporarily freezing one program (say, plutonium) in exchange for aid that it uses to advance other programs (say, missiles, uranium, and God-knows-what else).

If President Obama is prepared to relax sanctions now, having achieved nothing more than a peek at Kim Jong Il’s stumpy, varicose leg, we are lost for sure.