Score One for Diplomacy

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/opinion/04thur1.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=login&oref=slogin

Score One for Diplomacy


Published: October 4, 2007

If North Korea lives up to its promise to begin disabling key parts of its nuclear program within weeks, and to finish the job by year’s end, the world will be a safer place. To get this deal, the Bush administration, after dragging its feet for four years, displayed an admirable and all too rare mixture of diplomatic creativity, flexibility, patience and follow-through. To keep it moving forward, it will need even more.

Like all diplomatic deals worth their salt, both sides had to give up a lot. North Korea’s paranoid leadership has agreed to a degree of transparency few would have predicted. A team of American experts is expected to travel to North Korea next week to begin the disabling, at America’s expense, of its nuclear reactor, plutonium separation plant and other parts of its Yongbyon nuclear complex. The North Koreans also promised to come clean about how much plutonium they have produced — suspected to be at least 10 bombs’ worth — and to prove that they’re not hiding a separate uranium enrichment program, as Washington has alleged.

President Bush — who once famously declared that he loathed North Korea’s leader — has agreed to reward Pyongyang, knowing that it has yet to commit to give up those plutonium stocks and whatever weapons it has built. The United States and North Korea’s neighbors will provide North Korea with a large amount of fuel oil. Washington has also promised to lift trade sanctions, drop North Korea from its list of terrorism-sponsoring nations and move toward normalizing relations.

With both sides playing against type, there is bound to be very tough moments ahead. This week’s agreement is already months behind schedule, and Pyongyang will likely delay, obfuscate and demand a lot more. Many conservative critics — outside the administration and in — are already denouncing the deal, and its chief negotiator, Christopher Hill, as a sellout and the attacks will likely only get worse. (A classier administration would do a lot more to defend its negotiator.)

The good news is that Mr. Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, are apparently so eager for an enduring foreign policy victory, in hopes of offsetting their failures in Iraq, that they are willing to be patient. Even a recent stealth Israeli strike on Syrian targets, reportedly related to North Korea nuclear activity, failed to derail the negotiations. This week’s joint statement pointedly noted that North Korea had re-affirmed its commitment not to transfer nuclear technology and know-how.

The next phase — getting rid of North Korea’s fissile material and any weapons — will be even tougher to negotiate. Pyongyang will inevitably make more expensive and difficult demands. North Korea is already insisting on the same kind of light-water nuclear reactors promised under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration that President Bush eagerly jettisoned with Pyongyang’s help. It’s worth the effort.

We also hope that with a solid foreign policy success now in reach, Mr. Bush will learn the lesson of the North Korea deal and tell his diplomats to turn the same creativity, flexibility and follow-through toward trying to end Iran’s nuclear program.