Quotes of the Day

When negotiating with enigmatic, totalitarian North Korea, progress can be maddeningly hard to come by. That's why, when the on-again, off-again six-party talks restarted last week after a 13-month hiatus, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill warned reporters not to expect the impasse over North Korea's nuclear weapons program to be resolved soon. "I want to caution people not to think we are coming to the end of this," said Hill, who is the U.S. point man for the talks being held in Beijing.

For a world made uneasy by North Korea's claim that it possesses atomic weapons, it was heartening that negotiations were taking place at all. Three previous rounds of talks—which began in 2003 and include the participation of China, South Korea, Japan and Russia—ended without a positive result; diplomats feared the process might break down completely. But there was evidence of modest progress last week. For one thing, there was a series of private discussions between the two main players, the U.S. and North Korea, that seemed to indicate a softening of the Bush Administration's stance that it would not deal directly with Pyongyang. Previous talks were marked by bellicose rhetoric from the North, but Hill described the current bilateral discussions as "businesslike." Considering the high stakes involved, "neither Pyongyang nor Washington want to be blamed for having things break down," says Peter Beck, Seoul-based head of the International Crisis Group, an independent think tank. "There is incentive for both sides to at least feign wanting to talk."

While negotiations continued over the weekend, little headway appeared to be made on substantive issues. There was general agreement that the Korean peninsula should be "denuclearized," but no accord on what that meant. North Korea, which has stated it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against a "hostile" U.S., is arguing that a deal must include removal of any U.S. nuclear threat in the region—a nonstarter with Washington. The North also wants to keep its nascent civilian nuclear program, but the U.S. fears that would mean Pyongyang could still sell the building blocks of nuclear weapons technology to terrorists and other rogue nations. The two countries also remain at loggerheads over the timing of aid given to the North in exchange for verifiable disarmament. Hill indicated the U.S. might be open to a program in which the North is rewarded each time it takes a step forward. But the North Koreans "felt they'd have to do too much before corresponding measures from the other parties kicked in," according to a senior U.S. official.

As the talks stretched into Saturday, negotiators appeared willing to declare the fourth round a success if the parties simply signed a statement of "agreed principles." The details of the document were not made public. "It's hard to talk about progress until you have an agreement," Hill said on Saturday. Get ready for a fifth round of talks, and more.

• Susan Jakes
• Six-party talks with North Korea continue