It’s frighteningly easy to forget that the most explosive region in the world is not the Middle East. It’s not even South Asia any more due to recent improvements in relations between two nuclear-armed states – India and Pakistan – that have fought three wars.

That dubious honor belongs to the region along the 38th parallel in Northeast Asia where hundreds of thousands of combat troops, artillery and short-range missiles are poised on the border between North Korea and South Korea.

Even the Bush-Cheney administration, with its penchant for unilateralism and pre-emptive use of force, has recognized the high stakes and adopted a multilateral approach after initial flirtation with a risky hard-line, regime-change-based policy in its first term.

A series of “six-party talks” in recent years has produced tantalizing signs of progress from time to time on steps to reverse North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. Yet everything from deep distrust to conflicting assessments of key issues to the role of an obscure Macao bank has undermined implementation of several agreements. Today, a promising agreement reached in February is still held hostage to freeing some $25 million of North Korea’s funds.

Even if that tricky problem – how to suddenly “sanitize” a bank condemned for money-laundering by the U.S. Treasury – can be cleared up, odds are high that the on-again, off-again talks will flounder once more.

But there is a way to underpin the delicate and complex negotiations so they are less likely to fall apart and lead to another escalation of tension – and, most likely acquisition of additional nuclear weapons by the isolated North Korean regime.

An exceptional, nonpartisan group of top Asia experts has endorsed an even broader U.S. approach to the six-party talks in an April report. The Atlantic Council, a leading Washington think tank, has called on the Bush administration to seek a comprehensive settlement that would go beyond the nuclear issue and tackle all of the many political, security and economic issues that plague the north-south division and the region.

The Atlantic Council is urging the administration to pursue a set of parallel negotiations that would, among other things, replace the 1953 Armistice that ended the Korean War, develop a three-way (U.S., South and North Korea) mechanism to reduce tensions on the peninsula and establish a multilateral security organization for all of Northeast Asia.

While North Korea would have to make considerable concessions, such arrangements would offer far more attractive incentives to Kim Jong Il than a simple trade of his nuclear capability for large amounts of food and fuel – the basic bargain in the past. “Pyongyang will be more likely to [reach a settlement] if it perceives that its concessions will help bring about a resolution of all major security issues, while furthering economic development and normalizing political relations with the United States,” the report concludes.

Ambassador James Goodby, co-chairman of the council’s Working Group on North Korea, says the approach will demand close coordination and purpose. But it is, he argues, both logical and, critically, more likely to produce a more effective solution to the regional crisis.

Goodby, who engineered major arms agreements with the former Soviet Union, said in an interview: “First of all, if talks are limited to the nuclear issue as they have been most of the time, the process is easily sidetracked. For one thing, the nuclear weapons are North Korea’s only leverage – so they are not going to give them up without solid quid pro quos that improve their security. Also, nuclear weapons are not even the No. 1 priority for China, which fears armed conflict in Korea, fueled by a North collapse, and a stream of refugees into China.”

Denuclearization of North Korea’s small arsenal of nuclear weapons would remain the “the most critical component” of a comprehensive settlement. North Korea would be expected to close its declared plutonium-generating Yongbyon facility and come clean on its suspected program to enrich uranium. But with parallel talks on other issues, the council envisions a flexible framework that not only decreases tensions in the region but begins to pull North Korea into the Asian community of nations. The council foresees a secondary but real strategic value in enhancing the overall U.S.-China relationship.

The obstacles are many, of course. Even if hard-liners in the Bush administration can be corralled, even if China’s leaders can be persuaded to take a more aggressive stance as host of the talks, the volatile behavior of North Korea’s leader or Japan’s insistence on a full accounting for the kidnapping of their countrymen could disrupt real advances.

Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state who has effectively managed U.S. negotiations, has applied some of the council’s logic in setting up five working groups on issues: nuclear, economic and energy aid, U.S.-North Korea normalization, Japan’s concerns and a regional security organization. In fact, just before the council report was published, Hill put into practice ideas on working groups that Ambassador Goodby had been pushing for several years.

Hill has been allowed considerably greater autonomy in pursuing negotiations with North Korea than his predecessor – perhaps because sanity has set in among Bush-Cheney hawks who plunged the U.S. into a disastrous war in Iraq without good reason, a war that has badly overstretched the U.S. military and emboldened states such as North Korea and Iran.

Huge obstacles remain. But the sober, balanced Atlantic Council report offers a very sound framework to ease tensions and begin to build trust in a historically troubled region.

Fred Hill of Arrowsic, a former foreign correspondent and editorial writer for The Baltimore Sun, worked on national security issues, including North Korea, on Capitol Hill and in the State Department. He can be reached at hill207@juno.com.