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North Korea has decided to return to six-country talks on its nuclear program. If the talks start again in the last week of July, as Pyongyang has promised, it will have been 13 long months since the inconclusive third round of negotiations ended in June last year. The announcement comes not a moment too soon, given the chances of mounting international pressure on the North had July passed without a new start to negotiations.
North Korea has behaved recklessly in the last year. It has announced it has nuclear devices and reprocessed spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. The international community, with the U.S. at the helm, has been unable to take effective steps to contain it. Instead, the South Korean government has softened its stance toward the North and offered it aid on a large scale. Pyongyang may feel it is time to quit while it is ahead, having milked the standoff for what it was worth, and that more is to be gained now from coming back to the negotiating table, both materially and in terms of prestige.
But North Korea has also lost much. Above all, it has invited maximum international exposure of its oppressive system and dismal human rights record. Its economic plight, too, has got worse. So while it may have gained time and a chance to be heard on the nuclear issue, the environment for securing the system, which is after all its main concern, has deteriorated. By the same token, the regime will find that the sooner it renounces its nuclear program the more likely it is to survive.
Still, if the talks resume, their prospects are by no means bright. Nothing has changed in the basic positions of the U.S. and North Korea. If the North persists with antics like trying to divert the talks into mutual disarmament negotiations and boasting about how it is a nuclear state, matters can only get worse. Washington too needs to show some flexibility in negotiations while remaining focused on the central goal of getting the North to abandon its nuclear program.
A resumption of the talks in itself does not mean much. Unless they achieve substantial progress, they will merely fuel the suspicion that they are a waste of time. The UN Security Council would be waiting, and with it the prospect of sanctions. The next round of the six-party talks is the last chance to solve the nuclear dispute through dialogue.
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