EDITORIAL
Korea nuclear crisis takes turn for worse

The Chinese deserve a lot of credit for dragging the Americans and the North Koreans to talks in Beijing, but one wonders what they thought the benefit would be.

Consider what the two sides brought to the table:

• The American envoy, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, was under orders to make sure that North Korea's show of belligerence would gain it nothing. "We will not respond to threats," Secretary of State Colin Powell said after the talks had collapsed.

• Kelly's counterpart, Li Gun, of North Korea's foreign ministry, no doubt was well aware of the following: President Bush has stated he "loathes" Li's boss, Kim Jong Il. The U.S. Defense Department tried to have the experienced Kelly replaced by a more hawkish diplomat. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memo suggesting U.S. policy for North Korea should be regime change, not voluntary renunciation of nuclear programs and weapons.

• North Korea has said that since it was included in Bush's "axis of evil," an American attack against it is certain. It has said the lesson it learned from the Iraq War is that it needs a nuclear deterrent in the worst way.

Li reportedly told the American side that North Korea has nuclear weapons, and threatened to export them or conduct a "physical demonstration." He also said the North has nearly completed reprocessing of 8,000 spent fuel rods, which would yield material for more nuclear bombs. American intelligence thinks this last claim is a bluff.

Which is what the two sides take away from Beijing: complete mistrust of each other. It's as easy to believe that Pyongyang intends to become a nuclear power as that it is using nuclear threats as a bargaining chip for foreign aid. And because of the fierce rivalry between the American State and Defense departments, it's impossible to discern what President Bush really thinks or intends.

The Chinese and the South Koreans said yesterday that they are badly spooked by the possibility of an economic meltdown or a catastrophic war involving their North Korean neighbor. The failed U.S.-North Korean talks, in which neither side brought constructive words, did nothing to assuage those fears.