TOKYO: Days before the Bush administration approaches its first negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions, the United States is at odds with its nominal allies on the issue — South Korea, Japan, China and Russia — and US officials remain torn over how to proceed beyond this first step.

The administration’s cross-steps in dealing with North Korea have caused as much dismay in the region as has North Korea’s escalating brinkmanship.

The planned meeting on Wednesday between the United States, China and North Korea appears increasingly likely to take place, although it was nearly derailed. North Korea’s threatening claims on Friday to have started nuclear fuel reprocessing reignited battles within the Bush administration over whether to talk to North Korea at this time.

Even optimists find it hard to envision how the dispute can be brought to a conclusion that would satisfy all of the parties involved. At best, they say, there might be a wobbly package deal of compromises.

Even that would require serious concessions from the two major players that neither shows any sign of making. North Korea would have to surrender its nuclear ambitions and invite international inspectors back in, a step it has vehemently forsworn after seeing what happened in Iraq. And the United States would have to promise a peaceful and cooperative relationship with North Korea, an anathema to conservatives in the administration and to Bush, who has said he “loathes” North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

“The problem is that the difference between North Korea’s agenda and the US agenda is too large,” said Kim Byung Ki, a professor of political science at Korea University in Seoul.

About the only unanimity among the United States and the Asian countries surrounding North Korea is that they don’t want North Korea to become a declared nuclear power. Beyond that, the goals and strategies differ.

South Korea wants respect, parity, business deals and an end to friction with its northern neighbour, its enemy since the Korean War.

Japan wants to put to rest World War II claims from the North Koreans and stop a history of raids, threats and espionage by North Korea that has soured any move toward reconciliation.

China, too, is ambivalent about the talks. It wants North Korea to stop causing trouble on its eastern border, unsettling the business mood in the region. But it is reluctant to submit to a US agenda for the region, and does not want to see a weakening of the North Korean buffer between China and US troops stationed in South Korea.—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.