SINGAPORE: Talks on North Korea’s nuclear crisis will bring together six nations with very different agendas and contrasting ideas on how to ensure a nuclear-free Korean peninsula in an atmosphere set to be heavy with distrust.

North Korea said on Monday it expected the talks involving China, South Korea, the United States, Russia and Japan to take place soon. Japan said preparatory talks were likely very shortly and Beijing said it looked forward to playing host.

The satisfaction of the Chinese hosts at brokering the talks aimed at stemming isolated and impoverished Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions may be curbed by a popular Chinese expression — known also to Koreans — that goes “Same Bed, Different Dreams”.

That sums up the diverse expectations of those taking part in the talks.

“The US is expecting it to be five pressuring one; will it?” said Ralph Cossa, head of the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum CSIS think tank.

“Certainly everyone agrees that North Korea has to give up its nuclear weapons but most also want the US to offer some carrots. So there will be pressure on both North Korea and the US at the meeting,” he said.

It is not only the two protagonists who will come to the talks with contrasting aims.

“Negotiations will be complicated by the fact that South Korea, Japan, China and Russia will want their views heard,” wrote the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) in its latest report on North Korea.

“All parties agree that it is unacceptable for North Korea to become a nuclear power. All say they want to see a negotiated settlement. But they diverge in how this will be achieved,” it wrote.

The prospect of fresh talks comes amid a crisis that has escalated steadily since Washington’s announcement last October that Pyongyang had disclosed it was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea said on Tuesday it saw responsibility for a successful outcome lying with the US side, but offered no new insight into its long-held position that Washington must come up with security guarantees in return for a shift in its nuclear plans.

“How the discussions proceed and what results the talks produce depend on the US attitude,” said the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“The touchstone of whether the talks bear fruit is whether the US drops its hostile stance towards the DPRK,” KCNA said in a Korean language commentary. DPRK stands for the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea. Pyongyang has fuelled the crisis by becoming the first country to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, throwing out U.N. inspectors and taking its nuclear plant at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, out of mothballs.

It piled on further pressure when it told the chief US negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, at three-way talks in Beijing in April that it already had nuclear weapons. Those talks ended inconclusively.

Washington says it will not give in to what it calls blackmail.

Other parties to the upcoming talks expect the United States to go some way to meet North Korean anxiety after US President George W. Bush lumped it with Iraq and Iran in an “axis of evil”.

“It is vital that the US, South Korea and Japan — at a minimum — agree to what they are doing, and with concurrence from the Russians and the Chinese so we don’t start playing games there,” said Cossa.

He said US expectations of five nations putting pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions could be upset if Pyongyang succeeds in winning sympathy and support from Russia and China — even though both have been exasperated by the North’s tactics of escalation.

“As a result of being obnoxious, they (the North Koreans) have driven everyone else closer together,” said Cossa, adding that Pyongyang was certain to try to revive its traditional game of “divide and conquer” by making overtures and whispering into what it hopes will be friendly ears.

Divisions exist to be worked upon — as North Korea has done for years in its ties with China and the former Soviet Union.

Russia and China will want the United States to give something. The South Koreans would be thrilled with some US giving. Only Japan appears comfortable with the US hard line.

“The way forward is for the US to embrace — and to persuade China, South Korea, Japan and Russia, to support or at least acquiesce in — a four-phased approach that would start with the US giving North Korea a conditional security assurance in return for a verifiable halt to its nuclear programme,” said ICG.—Reuters