Can You Hear the Jaws Closing?
Perhaps Kim Jong-il can. A far more sensible and rational man that some experts and his own rhetoric suggest, Kim clouds my heart with melancholy by inviting us back to the diplomatic tarpit known as the six-party talks for another bout of wrestling:
North Korea has contacted the Bush administration in recent days in what American officials believe could be the first indications that the country is preparing to return to substantive negotiations about its nuclear program, senior American and Asian officials said Sunday.
The contacts were disclosed as a senior Defense Department official in Singapore, traveling with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said the administration would probably decide within weeks whether to push for United Nations Security Council penalties against North Korea.
The comments by the official suggested that the long debate in the administration over how to handle North Korea may be coming to a boil. President Bush is to meet with the president of South Korea, Roh Moo Hyun, on Friday, at a moment of unusually high tension between the two allies over North Korea.
Something appears to have convinced Mr. Kim that we are seriously considering a major shift in our North Korea policy in a direction decidedly adverse to his own interests. As is the case in most negotiations with gangsters, such moves have a way of producing short-term progress.