BEIJING --In a crucial first step toward resolving a 10-month-old nuclear standoff, representatives of the United States and North Korea met Wednesday to discuss the mounting crisis.
Sitting down together on the sidelines of six-nation negotiations aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly talked informally for about half an hour with Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il of North Korea, according to a South Korean diplomat.
"The U.S. side made comments about easing North Korea's security concerns, but I cannot give you any more details," said Wie Sung-rak, the director general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's North American Affairs Bureau. "From what North Koreans said during the meeting, we could read that North Korea is willing to resolve the nuclear issue through dialogue."
In Washington, senior U.S. officials said the American presentation at the talks included a proposal for a round of further discussions after the three-day Beijing session. That would be a departure from the much more loosely scheduled talks that the Bush administration has held with North Korea. The previous sessions were in North Korea in October and in Beijing in April.
"We would hope to have another round of talks and that would be, in itself, noteworthy," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Tuesday.
Armitage said any reward for North Korea "would be at the end of a process" that first involved the country dismantling its nuclear weapons programs.
State Department spokesman Phil Reeker described Kelly's talks with the North Korean diplomat as an "informal exchange," rather than a formal two-way meeting, which Washington has ruled out.
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kelly used the session to repeat the U.S. position that North Korea must agree to verifiably and irreversibly end its nuclear weapons programs. Only then would it get better diplomatic relations, trade ties and other benefits, the senior official said.
Ever since President Bush in early 2002 declared North Korea a member of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran, North Korea's isolated communist regime has accused the United States of planning to attack it.
As a condition to ending its nuclear weapons programs, North Korea has demanded a nonaggression treaty and normalization of relations with the United States.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and other officials have ruled out a formal nonaggression pact with North Korea, in part because it would require Senate approval, an unlikely prospect. U.S. officials have indicated they might offer a less formal security assurance.
There was no guarantee that Wednesday's tentative first step toward resolving the crisis would be followed by others.
"So far, the countries have put forward a number of preliminary demands regarding each other, which are blocking the development of these talks," Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency.
Losyukov, who heads the Russian delegation at the talks, didn't elaborate on the demands. But he said North Korea had declared a wish to be nuclear-free while expressing fear of "menaces from the United States."
Despite the wide gap between the demands of the United States and those of North Korea, the two protagonists' positions may be pushed closer together by the other four participants. Besides Russia, they are China, Japan and South Korea.
China, a longtime ally of North Korea and a major donor of fuel and food aid to the impoverished country, especially has shown strong determination in recent weeks to resolve the crisis.
As recently as April, when China hosted three-way talks with the United States and North Korea, Chinese officials seemed almost unconcerned about the mounting crisis, characterizing it as a conflict between the United States and North Korea.
No more. China's government _ and the academics who do a lot of the public talking for it _ now clearly regard the crisis as a direct and serious threat to China and the entire region.
"The people of the whole world will be living under great terror once North Korea reaches its goal" of developing a nuclear arsenal, Zhang Liangui, a professor at the Research Institute of International Strategy at the Central Party School, said in an interview.
During the April talks, which made no headway, China played the role of mediator. But Zhang said China now had taken a "more responsible attitude" because the nuclear showdown "has a direct bearing on China's vital security interest."
A nuclear North Korea is a frightening thought to Chinese officials, and not only because their increasingly estranged ally might one day turn against China.
A more immediate worry is that North Korea will trigger an arms race, provoking South Korea, Japan or even Taiwan to go nuclear. That would destabilize the region at a time that China needs stability to assure its continued economic growth.
But while fearful of a nuclear North Korea, China also fears that the Bush administration might try to resolve the crisis in a way that provokes a war.
A war on the Korean Peninsula probably would devastate South Korea, which is an important economic partner for China.
"Piling up pressure unilaterally or taking hard-line measures will not help solve the nuclear issue," said a commentary Wednesday published by China's official Xinhua news agency. "On the contrary, it would deepen contradictions and threaten regional peace and security. Only peaceful measures can bring hope to solving the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula."
Bush administration officials had said they had low expectations for the talks. One reason is that the U.S. intelligence community is largely convinced that North Korea is making nuclear bombs not merely as bargaining chips but because "they feel they need them," a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Confirming a split within the Bush administration on how to deal with North Korea, the official said some hard-liners say, "`Screw the North Koreans. Undermine them. Blockade them.' And when you say, `But what if their reaction is to explode a nuclear weapon in South Korea? What then?' They have no answer."
Hard-liners in the Bush administration appear to have control of the agenda for the current round of talks. That much seemed clear Monday, when officials in Washington announced that Jack Pritchard, the special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, had resigned just days before the talks were to open.
Pritchard, who had advocated a policy of incentives as well as penalties to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear programs, was criticized last week by a senator for being too conciliatory.

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