North Korea and the United States are heading toward a conflict that could be far worse than the war in Iraq. The Bush administration fears that North Korea will start selling its nuclear know-how and products of its new nuclear plants or even use the nuclear weapons it soon will be producing to attack Japan, South Korea or U.S. military installations in the area. The Pentagon’s plan is to pressure North Korea to abandon and destroy its nuclear development, organize other nations to force a “regime change” in Pyongyang, and develop nuclear weapons that can penetrate suspected underground weapons plants in North Korea and anywhere else.

For its part, North Korea is desperately poor, needs outside help to supply food and energy, and fears a military assault by the United States. It has good reason: The Bush administration listed it as part of an “axis of evil,” refused to continue peace negotiations begun by the Clinton administration, announced a policy of pre-emptive warfare, put that policy into action in Iraq, and now is about to pull its 37,000-troop garrison in South Korea back from the border with the North. The purpose of the move looks to some like clearing the way for a possible U.S. nuclear attack.

Things have reached an impasse. North Korea wants bilateral talks with the United States and offers to drop its nuclear weapons plans if the United States promises not to attack or try to overthrow the North Korean government and resumes food and energy assistance. The Bush administration refuses bilateral talks and insists that North Korea destroy its nuclear weapons plants before any negotiations start.

A sensible middle-ground solution was outlined last week in a New York Times interview with Selig S. Harrison, the director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington and author of “Korean Endgame: A strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement.” Between frequent trips to North and South Korea, Mr. Harrison spends his summers in Maine, on Little Cranberry Island.

He favors a suggestion by China for a six-power security agreement involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea. He told The Times: “The external powers would commit themselves not to deploy nuclear weapons in Korea. And the two Koreas would pledge not to make nuclear weapons. This would require inspection machinery centering on, but not limited to, the International Atomic Energy Agency.” Thus the Bush administration would not have to give its own bilateral security guarantee to North Korea, which it has refused to do.

Here is a proposal worth pursuing. It makes far more sense than the current confrontation and threats, which are not working and could lead to an open-ended nuclear arms race and possibly to a disastrous war involving both Koreas, Japan, China and the United States.

It also presents an opportunity for President Bush to emulate a far-sighted action by his father. President George H. W. Bush in 1991 began the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula by pulling out the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons that had been deployed there since 1957.