NORTH KOREA’S NUKES

Starting Wednesday with the announcement that North Korea had a nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 agreement, a number of experts in Washington have rushed to say what this means and how the United States should respond. But the sharp lack of consensus here and abroad suggests these are at best educated guesses, leaving the Bush administration with little option but to continue its tentative policy recently begun with President Kim Jong Il.

In a news story in The Washington Post, Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, outlined the split in thinking toward the announcement. He said the administration would hear two distinct choices. “They either play ‘gotcha'” and cut off relations, he said, “or they can justifiably claim that their tough approach produced exactly the change in North Korean behavior we had been seeking. … North Korea has taken some surprising steps just in the last three months. They are not changing regimes but they are making change in their regime.”

North Korea is said to have admitted to its nuclear program after special envoy James Kelly had presented documentation of it during a visit with officials in Pyongyang two weeks ago. Mr. Kelly’s visit was the first since President Bush took office, abruptly put an end to talks begun under the Clinton administration and accused North Korea of being part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and Iran.

The U.S. announcement came as five Japanese nationals, abducted by North Korea decades ago, were returning home. Recognition of their existence was part of North Korea’s attempt to improve its relationship with Japan, and if it means that Mr. Kim is signaling his country cannot survive in the desperate isolation in which it has cloaked itself, it presents an opportunity for peaceful resolution to a half-century standoff.

But until the situation becomes clearer, the Bush administration should proceed slowly – welcoming North Korea’s recognition of its nuclear program, demanding its dismantlement, recommitting to the aid the United States agreed to in 1994 if the weapons are dismantled, urging that talks and further ties to peaceful nations be part of North Korea’s future. The next move is Mr. Kim’s.