Not suprisingly, this comes right after we kicked the crap out of Saddam and showed that we're serious and have some resolve- something I'm sure N. Korea did not expect after having dealt with Clinton.
Article is here
WASHINGTON, April 15 — President Bush has approved a plan for the United States to begin negotiations with North Korea in Beijing next week, the first talks between the countries since the government of Kim Jong Il threw out international inspectors and restarted its main nuclear weapons plant, United States and Asian officials said today.
White House officials refused to comment on the negotiations. But officials in several countries said China has promised the United States that it will act as a full participant in the talks rather than just convening them. The Chinese had hoped to conduct the initial meetings in secret, officials said.
The agreement to enter the negotiations with both China and the United States marks a major concession for North Korea and an apparent victory for President Bush. Mr. Bush's strategy of not engaging in one-on-one talks with North Korea had been widely criticized by Asian allies and by many Korea experts.
North Korea, in turn, had insisted on talking only with Washington, a reflection, experts said, of its obsession with being treated as an equal.
Mr. Bush refused, insisting that the North Korean nuclear program was a major problem for all of northeast Asia. He argued that if the United States negotiated alone, North Korea would try to split Washington from its Asian allies, who would pressure the United States to strike a deal on North Korea's terms.
But by keeping the Japanese, the South Koreans and the Russians out of the room next week, the North can make the argument that only one other nation — one that has served as the North's economic lifeline — is involved.
"This is what the traffic would bear," a senior American official familiar with the secret negotiations with the North said tonight.
The official described the participation of the Chinese as a breakthrough. "What's new here is that there is an active, bold participatory role for the Chinese," the official said. China's agreement to take on such a role began to take shape in the last days of former President Jiang Zemin's government. His successor, Hu Jintao, has continued Mr. Jiang's approach after becoming president last month.
China briefly cut off North Korea's oil last month, after what the Chinese called a technical problem. But the move was interpreted by American officials as a warning to the North about the price of intransigence.
The senior American official said tonight that the United States "reserved the right" to bring in other nations as the talks progressed. Japanese and South Korean officials, while initially unhappy at being excluded, said tonight they were promised by the administration that they would be updated daily on the talks and would help forge negotiating positions.
The negotiating position that the United States and its allies take will be an early test of America's strained relations with South Korea, whose new president, Roh Moo Hyun, has vowed to accelerate a policy of trade and engagement with the North. Mr. Roh visits the United States for the first time next month.
The American envoy conducting the talks next week will be James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for Asia. Mr. Kelly visited the North's capital, Pyongyang, last October and told North Korea that United States intelligence agencies had caught the country building a clandestine uranium-production facility.
To Mr. Kelly's surprise, the North Koreans said they broke out of their nuclear "freeze" because the United States had threatened the country when Mr. Bush cited North Korea as part of the "axis of evil." But the North's effort to secretly import uranium-enriching technology, intelligence officials say, began when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas.
In the six months since the United States and North Korea last met, the North Koreans ejected inspectors, withdrew from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and restarted the plutonium reprocessing facility that was frozen under a 1994 agreement with the United States.
