North Korea wanted the Bush administration to make a significant concession first. It demanded that the US provide it with a light-water nuclear reactor for electricity production. Only then would it dismantle its nuclear weapons and programmes, rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and accept International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. The North is asserting a right to peaceful nuclear energy and reminding US that it was promised light-water nuclear reactors in the 1994 Framework Agreement negotiated by the Clinton administration.

At present, North Korea is not in full compliance with the NPT, so it cannot claim a right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The North will be able to exercise that right only after it returns to full compliance. And since Pyongyang will have to take many substantive steps before it is in full compliance Washington is right to say that this is not the ‘’appropriate time” for a commitment to provide a reactor.

The demand for the reactor is consistent with the North Koreans’ style of negotiating. But all parties to the Beijing agreement stand to benefit from this agreement. This is tolerable price for a denuclearised Korean Peninsula. Also, President Bush learns to change a regime’s behaviour by diplomacy rather than by force.