BUSH’S FLEXIBILITY

Not yet an olive branch, but it does look like a twig. For the first time since the angry confrontation with North Korea began, the Bush administration has suggested that it might discuss resuming energy assistance. The offer was conditional, but sounded like a conciliatory move that could possibly lead to negotiation to settle the crisis over North Korea’s inflammatory actions toward building its own nuclear weapons arsenal.

The suggestion came from Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly after meetings in Seoul with South Korean officials, including President-elect Roh Moo Hyun. Mr. Kelly told reporters: “Once we get beyond nuclear weapons, there may be opportunities with the U.S., with private investors, with other countries, to help North Korea in the energy area.”

On a separate track, North Korean officials from the country’s United Nations delegation met last week in Santa Fe with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and are said to have asked him to set up meetings with the administration to discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The North Korean envoys sought the meeting with Mr. Richardson, a Democrat and the Clinton administration’s ambassador to the U.N. and, later, energy secretary. They complained that they had tried in vain to arrange talks with the administration.

These developments add up to an apparent effort by North Korea to return to a 1994 agreement that the Clinton administration signed with Pyongyang. Now President Bush appears to be edging in the same direction, despite advice from members of his administration.

Neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration has had much use for the 1994 agreement, officially called a “framework” rather than a treaty. Former President Jimmy Carter, acting as a private citizen, negotiated it in the face of angry objection by most Clinton officials. They had been pressing for UN sanctions and preparing for air strikes and a possible 400,000-troop invasion to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Under the framework, that crisis was soothed. North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear reactor believed to be for production of weapons-grade plutonium and submit to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and inspection. In return, the United States agreed to move toward normalized political and economic relations with North Korea, help build light-water nuclear reactors for North Korea and meanwhile help supply North Korea with fuel oil. Most officials, then as now, assumed that the North Korean economy and government would soon collapse.

Fear of nuclear attack motivates North Korea as well as the United States. Selig S. Harrison, a leading specialist on North Korea, wrote in his recent book, “Korean Endgame”: “The North Korean effort to develop nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems was a direct response to nuclear saber rattling during the Korean War and the subsequent deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the South for more than three decades.” After some initial heated words, President Bush seems to be listening more closely to those urging calm, a needed response as the president continues to press for military action in Iraq. Negotiations carry their own hazards, but talking beats fighting.