President Bush's defiant pledge to disarm and rebuff the "axis of evil" represented by Iraq, Iran and North Korea has met with decidedly mixed results.

The thing that supposedly bound the axis was access to, or deep interest in, nuclear technology by a hostile and aggressive government.

Well, as we have learned following our invasion of Iraq, that country did not and does not have nuclear technology.

The one thing we did accomplish through our invasion was to convince Iran and North Korea that they may also be in our gunsights. Rather than intimidating those countries, the invasion had the perverse opposite effect of heightening interest in nuclear weapons capability.

Bush's rhetoric hasn't helped to lower tensions much. He has derisively described North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as being hardly worthy even of contempt.

And recently, in response to Iran's announced decision to restart uranium enrichment efforts, the president made it plain he would consider attacking Iran to halt the program.

Iran, not entirely credibly, argues the enrichment program is for peaceful energy use only.

So where do we go from here? It is critical that the United States and the international community continue the difficult but absolutely necessary policy of pursuing both carrot and stick approaches.

By this, we mean serious sanctions on one side and sincere offers of economic aid on the other.

While it is true that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty gives Iran and North Korea the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power, it would be naive to believe that is all they have in mind.

But saber-rattling won't work. Instead, we must seize on every opportunity, no matter how slim, to negotiate our way out of this stalemate. The six-party talks with North Korea are scheduled to resume shortly, and Kim was recently quoted by a Russian envoy as saying he would rejoin the nonproliferation treaty if the United States stops its perceived threats.

Yes, we've heard this before, but it remains a straw worth grasping.

For its part, Iran says it is willing to resume talks with the Europeans after rejecting earlier EU incentives as insulting.

To any sane person, it is clear that Iran and North Korea could never use nuclear weapons technology without guaranteeing their own destruction.

So it is our job, through talks that involve both sanctions and incentives, to make that lesson clear to them.