KEY POINTS:
The United States insists there is a lesson for Tehran in North Korea's groundbreaking agreement to take steps toward nuclear disarmament. "Why should it not be seen as a message to Iran that the international community is able to bring together its resources?" the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, asked. Nowhere in her response, however, did she acknowledge that the deal with Pyongyang also contained lessons for the US. Or that a willingness to engage and compromise could be similarly useful in curbing Iran's nuclear programme.
The US is right, to some extent, that the new pact is the product of international effort. The plan was hammered out in talks with North Korea in Beijing involving the US, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea. It was they who, spurred on by North Korea's testing of a nuclear device last October, extracted a pledge from Pyongyang to shut down its main nuclear reactor, allow international inspection of the site and enact the dismantling of its atomic weapons programme. In return for steps along that path, North Korea will receive a graduated sum of fuel oil or economic aid totalling $435 million.
Other aspects of the deal make the more interesting reading, however. In particular, the US has agreed to bilateral talks as part of a process to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and to normalise relations. It will also resolve within 30 days a dispute over frozen North Korean bank accounts in Macau. The direct talks, especially, have long been sought by Kim Jong-il, the leader of the rogue state. His priority, particularly since being deemed a member of President George W Bush's "axis of evil", has been to safeguard his regime by reaching an accommodation with the US. The nuclear test was, to a large degree, a bargaining chip in this process.
That event was the catalyst for the US, cajoled by its fellow negotiators, to demonstrate the sort of flexibility that had prompted previous advances in negotiations with Pyongyang. In 2005, bilateral talks paved the way to an agreement under which North Korea pledged to stop developing nuclear weapons and rejoin international arms treaties. This was subsequently undone by a US crackdown on alleged money-laundering by North Korea in Macau; a step Washington also now appears ready to rescind.
A changed American mood, as much as any mellowing in Pyongyang, seems behind the new agreement. And crucial to the progress has been a revived willingness to engage the North Koreans face to face. Given this, it might be tempting to believe the White House will now bring diplomacy, not an increasingly dangerous combativeness, to the stand-off with Iran. That, however, seems unlikely. The US has always seemed more ready to compromise in negotiations with Pyongyang than with its adversaries in the Middle East. Indeed, the flexibility of engagement that cemented the Korean deal may have much to do with Washington's desire to clear the decks to allow a singular, increasingly vituperative focus on Iran.
If so, the lesson that painstaking diplomacy can work, even in the most unpromising of circumstances, will have been missed. It is too early, of course, to say the deal with North Korea neutralises one of the world's more dangerous flashpoints. Pyongyang has been the subject of far too many false dawns, mistrust remains and much detail must be thrashed out in future negotiations. But the agreement contains the undeniable seeds of progress, as does the manner in which it was achieved. Given the dire nature of the alternatives, that is a message the US can hardly ignore.
