EDITORIAL
Rash speech must not endanger Korea talks

We're relieved to hear that John Bolton, the State Department's top arms control official, will not be attending the six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program.

This is not to say that Bolton is not a valuable asset in his specialty, but that his vocal, and sometimes less than diplomatic, representation of a more hard-lined faction on North Korea in the Bush administration has already jeopardized the success of these crucial talks involving the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, China and the United States.

South Korean, Chinese and Japanese officials cringed as Bolton delivered an ad hominem attack against North Korea even as China was nailing down Pyong-yang's agreement for multilateral talks, instead of the bilateral talks it had preferred. In a speech in Seoul, Bolton described Kim Jong Il as a "tyrannical dictator" who "lives like royalty" while "he keeps hundreds of thousands of people locked in prison camps with millions more mired in abject poverty, scrounging the ground for food."

But aren't those remarks entirely true? Indeed they are, and they bear repeating. But not at that moment, at the cost of derailing these crucial talks.

Bolton's faction seems to believe that there's nothing to be gained by negotiating an agreement with North Korea, only to see it broken. They reportedly have acquiesced in the upcoming talks in the belief that their failure will demonstrate the need for a harsher approach.

It may come to that, of course, but it is not an outcome to be wished for, and it must be a last resort. Given the frightful risks involved, we must give negotiations our best effort. Words such as those Bolton used in Seoul will help to make their failure a foregone — and possibly catastrophic — conclusion.