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When President Roh Moo-hyun and U.S. President George W. Bush over the weekend discussed the North Korean nuclear issue, they reaffirmed that the six-party talks should be resumed soon, and that there must be positive bilateral cooperation to make that happen. It was three days after Bush in his State of the Union address said he wanted to make North Korea give up its nuclear ambitions through close cooperation with Asian countries. Bush also spoke on the phone with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. China, meanwhile, will dispatch a special envoy to Pyongyang, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said.
The stage is therefore set for the resumption of the six-party talks. North Korea can scarcely avoid them any more. Now the government must be careful to do the right thing when Pyongyang attends the talks, because in itself their resumption will not solve the nuclear standoff.
The positions of all parties involved, after all, remain unchanged. The gap between Seoul and Washington has not narrowed. North Korea wants massive aid in return for freezing its program, but the U.S. says that is not enough - it wants nothing short of total surrender of all nuclear materials including enriched uranium. Pyongyang asserts that it has no enriched uranium.
Although our government has made no public statements about these positions, it has indicated a certain level of sympathy with Pyongyang in the matter. Why? Washington wonders.
For the six-party talks not to fail again, that chasm between Seoul and Washington must be narrowed first. Opportunely, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will reportedly meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the U.S. The meeting will be the first official occasion for Rice to deal directly with the North Korean nuclear issue since she took office.
When they meet, the two ministers need above all to review if intelligence about Pyongyang flows smoothly to and fro between the two allies. They must also examine why the conclusions they draw from the intelligence and the course of action they propose diverge so widely. Without shared intelligence, assessment and joint strategies in response, there can be no genuine cooperation.
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