Editorial: Nuclear risk the world can't ignore

Opinion

North Korea's testing of a nuclear weapon has attracted stern and virtually unanimous international condemnation. Even China, usually its most significant ally, described the act as "brazen". World leaders have noted the danger of such a weapon in the hands of a country that numbers rogue states and terrorists among its few friends. As one, they have also talked of neutralising that threat by cajoling Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Not one, however, has emphasised the most likely means of achieving this.

The talk, as during previous crises, has been of economic sanctions which would force North Korea back to the negotiating table. But these have failed before, and do not address why Kim Jong-il has chosen to defy and provoke the rest of the world. For North Korea's leader, the nuclear test was a bargaining chip, a potential way to safeguard his regime. To achieve this security, he wants a mutual non-aggression pact with the United States, the nation that deemed his country a member of the "axis of evil".

North Korea's chief desire, having witnessed the fate of Iraq, another member of that axis, is to sit down with US negotiators to fashion such a protocol. But Washington is wary of displaying leniency, especially to Iran. There must be, it says, a resumption of six-party talks, including also China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. It is unwilling to acknowledge the previous failure of this forum and its own policy, which has undermined South Korea's efforts to improve relations with Pyongyang.

The Bush Administration's approach also ignores the advances made a year ago when a pledge to stop developing nuclear weapons and rejoin international arms treaties was extracted from North Korea. At that time, the US, coaxed by China, stepped outside the six-party framework to hold bilateral talks. The outcome was an agreement affirming that the US had no intention of attacking North Korea, and that Pyongyang had the right to a civilian nuclear energy programme after disarmament.

This flexible American thinking owed something to the depth of the strife in Iraq and something to a North Korean announcement that it had nuclear weapons. Regrettably, the progress proved shortlived. US moves in the unrelated sphere of illicit financial activities soon destroyed the fragile relationship. Now, however, fresh evidence of North Korea's nuclear progress should again galvanise Washington. To break the stalemate, it should sit down with North Korea to address its security concerns. Success there would be the forerunner of resumed six-party negotiations and North Korea's eventual renouncing of nuclear weapon ambitions.

Other responses are likely to be unproductive. Economic sanctions serve little purpose against an already impoverished state. Indeed, it is not in the interests of China or South Korea for them to succeed. China in particular, does not want to have to cope with an influx of refugees. It will ensure that North Korea receives sufficient food and fuel.

With Washington, the United Nations must become more involved, not necessarily in leading negotiations but in seeking to reverse the drift towards nuclear proliferation. A UN summit last year made pitiful progress. Now, North Korea's test, allied with Iran's march along the same path, has attracted long-overdue international attention. The stakes have been raised. There is now a heightened risk of a nuclear black market and of an Asian nuclear arms race. The proliferation threat, probably the greatest facing the world, can no longer be ignored.