Another Sham agreement with North Korea.

ITEM: In an early October news release, the Arms Control Association reports: "After mope than two years of stop-and-go efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis, six countries agreed Sept. 19 in Beijing on a joint statement of principles to guide future negotiations. The product of several weeks of tough diplomacy, the statement commits the participants to achieving 'the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner.' The statement contains several ambiguities and leaves many difficult issues to be resolved. Nevertheless, it marks he most important diplomatic achievement of the talks to date."

ITEM: The Washington Post for October 5 reported: "With the fragile framework of a nuclear agreement in hand, President Bush's envoys now plan to push North Korea to begin disclosing the extent and locations of its secret development programs right away to test the sincerity of Pyongyang's commitment to give up its pursuit of atomic weapons.... Bush and his advisers want to translate the pact's ambiguous language into a more concrete set of obligations, senior officials said."

CORRECTION: Contrary to the limp misgivings expressed above, it is more than an "ambiguity" when even the basic aspects of an agreement are interpreted completely differently by the parties involved. What kind of an agreement is it when the parties can't even concur on what is in the deal? As usual, North Korea got most of what it wanted while Washington and its negotiating partners were left with empty boasts that an "agreement" had been effected.

The Bush administration formerly ridiculed the Clinton administration for promising North Korea light-water nuclear reactors to produce electricity (a 1994 agreement that fell apart when it became obvious that Pyongyang was continuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program). As late as this August, the Bush team held that North Korea should have no nuclear reactors whatsoever. Those principles were thrown overboard in the rush to sign a last-minute, take-it-or-leave-it proposal offered by Communist China.

To get Pyongyang's latest worthless promise to abandon its nuclear weapons programs, the U.S. (and South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia) agreed to provide North Korea with a light-water reactor at an "appropriate time"--which meant (at least to Washington) after the dismantlement of the North's weapons program. There were also promises of economic and security aid to the North, as well as electric power from South Korea. The North's underground weapons program was not mentioned.

Pyongyang, however, demands the reactor first. North Korean officials said that Washington "should not even dream" that Pyongyang would give up its nuclear weapons program until it first receives a light-water nuclear reactor. "The physical foundation of consolidating trust between our nations is a light-water reactor," a top North Korean official told the Associated Press in early October.

Yet, realistically, why should the Stalinist regime give up its nukes? They are virtually the only thing that makes North Korea more important than, say, Eritrea or Paraguay. It has been playing this high-stakes game successfully for many years, with the hole card always being that nuclear program. It held out for military concessions before ratifying the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985. The U.S. as a result cancelled regional military exercises and took its nuclear weapons out of South Korea (which also gave up its own nuclear program). Then the North played hard to get again until the Clinton administration caved on several fronts, including helping to supply nearly half of the North's oil needs. Washington has handed Pyongyang more than a billion dollars in foreign assistance since 1995.

In December of 2002, the North Koreans ejected UN inspectors who had been monitoring their Yongbyon site, and also dismantled the equipment belonging to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Shortly thereafter, it bolted from the NPT, which it had obviously been violating. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has acknowledged--as was admitted by Pakistani arms dealer and nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan--that the North was provided with the equipment and wherewithal to produce the highly enriched uranium needed to develop nuclear weapons.

Any story about North Korea's "civilian" nuclear energy program is fiction. There is "no evidence whatever to suggest that North Korea attempted to harness the atom for peaceful purposes," writes Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. "The reactors at Yongbyon--the site that initially attracted world concern about Pyongyang's nuclear intentions--were never hooked up to the country's electrical energy grid, nor are they today. They have been exclusively used for harvesting weapons-grade plutonium."

The rewards that North Korea has gleaned have been noticed by other would-be nuclear powers. As nuclear expert Henry Sokolski wrote in Time Asia magazine recently, quoting an Indian security analyst: "'Why should India back Washington's effort to refer Iran's nuclear misbehavior to the United Nations?' North Korea withdrew from the NPT, made bombs, and has a covert uranium enrichment program it denies exists--yet Washington has affirmed its right to nuclear power plants."

North Korea gains advantages by acting as if it were almost a lunatic nuclear power and by bluffing the West. Meanwhile, Washington throws away potentially winning hands and imagines that North Korea will suddenly become civilized by sitting around a negotiating table. This pattern has been going on for decades.

Chuck Downs summarized it well in Over The Line: North Korea's Negotiating Strategy (1999): "The West negotiates from a position of strength, but neglects to bring its strength to bear. It chooses not to pressure North Korea with its superior military power, agreeing instead not to threaten. It holds economic power that North Korea cannot compete with, but gives the regime economic aid. It can afford not to negotiate, but instead of making North Korea sue for peace, the West implores North Korea to participate in talks in which the West has virtually nothing at stake. In every negotiation, the West holds tactical and strategic leverage it will not employ."

This is no accident.