North Korea and the United States remain in conflict over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, but at least they are talking. Their halting but still continuing exchanges are over a possible resumption of the six-nation talks brokered by China. The first session, last August, ended with vague hopes for another meeting in October. Then mid-December seemed possible. Now even January is only speculative.

Both sides have given modest ground, however. When the August talks opened, North Korea proposed a negotiating plan with four stages of simultaneous concessions leading to dismantling of the nuclear facilities in exchange for U.S. food and energy assistance and a U.S. security guarantee. But neither the Bush administration nor the major media took that offer serious enough to even mention it.

The U.S. for months had demanded complete dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons effort before it would even discuss other issues. Now President Bush says he is ready to “consider” a six-nation Northeast Asian security guarantee and indicates readiness to consider a systematic process leading to a security guarantee and economic benefits for Pyongyang.

Why the change? China has been pressing Washington for a more flexible posture, but the key reason seems to be an administration response to North Korea’s offer to freeze its “nuclear substance” as well as well as its nuclear facilities. North Korea repeated that cryptic phrase in an unpublicized meeting with six Americans in November.

“Nuclear substance” means the plutonium that North Korea has admittedly been processing for the past year and could begin at any time to sell to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. This is a clear and present threat, far more dangerous than the theoretical threat of deploying nuclear missiles that could reach U.S. territory.

Mr. Bush rightly says that a freeze is not good enough. But he has left open the possibility of a negotiated end to the North Korean nuclear – and plutonium – threat. He thus seems to have sided with administration doves, headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell. The president’s current position amounts to a rebuff for the administration hawks, notably Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, and Richard Joseph, a National Security Council specialist in nonproliferation. They favor economic (and possibly military) pressure for regime change in North Korea and oppose any negotiations or economic assistance that may help the North Korean regime stay in power.

If the nuclear crisis eventually is resolved, it will obviously take concessions from both sides. The United States is justified in fearing North Korea’s nukes and especially its plutonium processing. And being called part of an “axis of evil” and seeing itself as a likely target for U.S. “pre-emptive” attack justifiably unsettles North Korea. Of course it wants a security guarantee.

One of its negotiators in the November meeting put it this way: “Why would we need nuclear weapons if we no longer feel threatened? Why would we give up our right to have them if you keep on talking about regime change? It’s as simple as that.”