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AROUND THE WORLD 2: Signs of Hope in North Korea?

After many months of tension between North Korea and the United States, the countries finally met together and talked. The Meeting took place in China and four other countries were present. The topic under discussion was North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

North Korea is a small, poor country that borders China at the South-East. The United States and North Korea have not gotten along for more than fifty years, but over the past year, their relationship has become more strained because North Korea has announced to the world that it has nuclear weapons. Only a few countries have nuclear weapons and they are so destructive that the world community has agreed that no more countries should produced them. Therefore, the United States and the powerful countries near North Korea have been encouraging the North Koreans to halt their program and dismantle their weapons.

The talks this week, between South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, the United States, and North Korea mark the first opportunity to meet face to face with North Korean representatives and negotiate an end to the weapons program. This seems like a very positive sign of hope, but in fact, the negotiations didn't seem to accomplish a lot.

North Korea says it will not make changes in its program until the United States signs an agreement that says it will not take aggressive actions (such as those in Iraq) against North Korea and its leader Kim Yong Il. The United States is hesitant to make such an agreement because it must maintain some sort of a threat against North Korea, and because the United States has no reason to believe that North Korea will follow through with ending its weapons program. Thus, the situation after the talks is much that same as it was before the talks began.

Still, the fact that North Korea and the United States have met is a reason to be a little bit optimistic, and it sounds as though the countries will meet again in October. This is probably the best possible outcome in this difficult situation, because in international affairs, the alternative to negotiation is often the use of weapons.

--Written by Betsy Mesard

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