(Associated Press) - North Korea says it wants to talk.Ditto Iran. So why is America saying no?
With both Pyongyang and Tehran seemingly immune to pressure over their nuclear programs, the view that it's time to shelve confrontation and try negotiation is gaining credence, reports Trend.
But the risks involved in sitting down with two members of President Bush's "Axis of Evil" have left Washington resisting calls from Pyongyang and Tehran for one-on-one negotiations.
In the case of North Korea, Bush administration officials have pointed to the failures of the Clinton era. Bush himself has rebuffed the idea. Telling reporters he wanted to stick to engaging Pyongyang multilaterally, he said Wednesday: "One has a stronger hand when there's more people playing your same cards."
America was talking with the leadership in Pyongyang as recently as seven years ago. In 1999 President Clinton agreed to the first major easing of economic sanctions against the North since the end of the Korean war in 1953 if the communist nation delivered on its promise of giving up aspirations to own nuclear weapons.
But the North quickly seized on delays in U.S. promises of help in developing a peaceful nuclear industry. By July 2000, it threatened to restart its nuclear program. Three years later it withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and kicked out U.N. nuclear inspectors, blinding the world and allowing it to move forward with its weapons development and its claimed bomb test Monday.
Where Iran is concerned, the Americans also have embraced a multination approach, agreeing earlier this year to join five other world powers in talking to Tehran if it agrees to give up uranium enrichment. But that strategy has its weaknesses.
China and Russia are resisting U.S. calls for harsh U.N. sanctions on Tehran for defying a Security Council demand that it stop enrichment, a possible pathway to nuclear weapons. That has left the Islamic republic confident that any punitive action that the world can agree to will be more symbolic than severe.
So what about America going it alone?
Under former President Mohammed Khatami, a relative moderate, U.S. officials said Iranians seemed genuinely interested in a one-on-one with Washington.
But while his hardline successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talks about talks, there is general agreement they would lead to nothing except possible U.S. humiliation at the hands of a man who boasts about wiping Israel off the map.
U.S-Iranian negotiations under Khatami "would have been the right thing to do back then," said Nadim Shehadi, of the Chatham House strategic think tank in London.
"Now, things have changed a lot. You have Ahmadinejad, the Americans perceiving themselves in a very weak position and the Iranians perceiving themselves in a very strong position.
Going face-to-face with North Korea also has its pitfalls.
David Wall of Chatham House said that beyond the risk of renewed failure in talking bilaterally to the North the Americans could not suddenly abandon their present negotiating partners China, South Korea, Japan and Russia without suffering damage.
"The others would feel sidelined and very upset if the Americans suddenly decided to go it alone," he said.
China, in particular, could see direct U.S.-Pyongyang talks as a possible threat in its traditional region of strategic influence.
Still, the multilateral approach is also problematic.
Overthrowing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has long been a thinly veiled dream of hard-liners in Washington. But the communist nation's neighbors within striking distance of its missiles have plenty of reasons to keep Kim safely ensconced in power.
Rival South Korea is wary of the huge costs associated with absorbing a poverty-stricken North in case of unification. Russia clutches to Pyongyang as bastion of waning influence in Northeast Asia.
Worse, a sudden implosion of the North's regime could trigger war with neighbors, a chaotic power struggle at home or a wave of nuclear proliferation generated by a power vacuum.
And while the endgame strategy of America's five co-negotiators might be the same a safer Korean peninsula they differ in the risks they are willing to take. That, in turn, strengthens the hand of the North.
So what's the next step?
With all other approaches failing, there may be no alternative to direct talks for the United States despite the risks.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Wednesday called on the Americans to drop their opposition to bilateral negotiations with the North. And Patrick M. Cronin, a former official in the Bush administration and the director of studies at London's International Institute of Strategic Studies says Washington needs to engage both Tehran and Pyongyang head-on.
Talking will not guarantee success," he says.
"But not talking may guarantee failure."