After 13 months of posturing, the six-party talks to denuclearize the Korean peninsula will finally resume July 26 in Beijing. But the mere resumption of these negotiations between the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia is not enough. If the North Korean nuclear challenge is to be resolved without confrontation, significant progress must be made this week.

To offer perspective on the current crisis, here is a brief history of U.S.-North Korean nuclear negotiations, excerpted from the recently published second edition of Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats. Deadly Arsenals is co-authored by Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar.

North Korea’s unchecked nuclear weapons capabilities represent a serious threat to regional security; to several key U.S. allies, including South Korea and Japan; and to the global effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Other nations possess a limited set of tools to influence North Korean behavior and convince its enigmatic leadership to abandon its unconventional weapons production and export activities. Past efforts that have alternated between enticing and pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear program have been unsuccessful.

George H.W. Bush Administration

During the administration of President George H.W. Bush, the United States began a strategy of engagement with Pyongyang, with the goal of ending their nuclear weapons activities and encouraging improved relations between North and South Korea.

This process included a high-level meeting in 1991 between then–undersecretary of state Arnold Kantor and North Korean representative Kim Yong Sun that convinced North Korea to complete the process of adhering to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1992.

Bill Clinton Administration

Engagement continued and expanded under the Clinton administration, which featured several periods of crisis, including one that almost led to war. That crisis eventually resulted in the completion of the 1994 Agreed Framework, which froze North Korea’s nuclear material production for eight years. The final months of the Clinton administration also saw an intense negotiating effort to end North Korea’s ballistic missile program. Then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright traveled to Pyongyang in 2000 and became the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to meet with Kim Jong Il. But the details of a missile elimination agreement could not be concluded by the time George W. Bush was inaugurated in January 2001.

George W. Bush Administration

Upon assuming office, the Bush administration undertook a wholesale reassessment of U.S. policy toward North Korea. Many incoming officials had actively opposed the 1994 Agreed Framework and were highly skeptical of the North’s commitment to give up its nuclear weapons program. On June 6, 2001, the White House issued a presidential statement announcing that the United States should "undertake serious discussions with North Korea on a broad agenda to include: improved implementation of the Agreed Framework relating to North Korea’s nuclear activities; verifiable constraints on North Korea’s missile programs and a ban on its missile exports; and a less threatening conventional military posture."

Despite this stated desire to pursue discussions, the U.S.–North Korean relationship was steadily deteriorating. Attempts by South Korean president Kim Dae Jung to win President Bush’s endorsement for his engagement or "sunshine" policy toward the North was bluntly rejected during a Washington summit in March 2001. Less than a year later, President Bush included North Korea as a member of the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address.

The situation remained tense throughout 2002. That summer, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that North Korea had been secretly trying to acquire a uranium enrichment program for at least two years. In October, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, James Kelly, traveled to Pyongyang for long-postponed discussions with his counterpart, Kim Gye Gwan. During the talks, Kelly confronted Kim over the North’s uranium enrichment effort and informed him that any improvement in U.S.-North Korea relations would be conditioned on the immediate and verified elimination of the enrichment program. During the two days of meetings, North Korean officials consistently denied the enrichment allegation, until Kang Sok Ju, the vice foreign minister, joined the talks and, according to all U.S. participants, admitted that the enrichment effort did exist. Since then, North Korean officials have consistently denied the admission, claiming that their words were translated incorrectly. U.S. officials maintain that Kim not only admitted to the program’s existence but also claimed that North Korea had the right to possess nuclear weapons because of the hostile policies of the Bush administration. Vice Minister Kang reportedly had no response when confronted with the allegation that the enrichment program predated the election of George W. Bush.

In December 2002, after having been confronted by the United States over its alleged uranium enrichment program, North Korea expelled IAEA inspectors from the country and removed all IAEA monitoring equipment and seals from its nuclear facilities, including the seals on the 8,000 fuel rods stored at Yongbyon. In addition, on January 10, 2003, North Korea announced that it was immediately withdrawing from the NPT. Two years later, on February 10, 2005, Pyongyang announced that it had "manufactured" nuclear weapons as a deterrent to U.S. hostility. The 5-megawatt-electric (MWe) reactor at Yongbyon was restarted in late 2002 and operated for more than two years. The reactor was shut down in April 2005 and could provide North Korea another 12 to 19 kilograms of plutonium.

Objectives of Six-Party Talks

Since October 2002, the United States has sought to convince North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapons capabilities under effective verification. This process has centered on the six-party talks, which convened in August 2003 and February and June 2004 in Beijing. The talks include representatives from the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia. China was instrumental in creating the talks, and it has been influential (according to both Chinese and American officials) in persuading North Korea to participate in them.

The first two rounds of the six-party talks produced little agreement. The United States sought to use the talks largely as a vehicle to bring coordinated, international pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear activities and has refused to provide anything that could be deemed as a reward for Pyongyang’s participation in the talks or any interim moves on the North’s nuclear program. The United States has also rejected calls to engage in any formal bilateral negotiations with North Korea, something Pyongyang has long sought and that might also be interpreted as a reward for its past behavior. North Korea, for its part, has tried to use the talks as a way of extracting concessions from the United States and other countries and has also tried to leverage the talks by demanding rewards simply for participating in them.

The U.S. posture at the talks changed significantly at their third round in June 2004. At the urging of South Korean and Japanese officials, the United States offered a detailed proposal for ending North Korea’s nuclear program. The proposal called for a new declaration to be made by North Korea, to include all plutonium production and uranium enrichment capabilities, nuclear materials, weapons and related equipment, and for the elimination of all of these to begin after a three-month preparatory period.

In exchange for agreeing to this proposed approach, non-U.S. parties would provide North Korea with heavy fuel oil, and once the declaration was given by the North and deemed credible, the other parties would provide North Korea with multilateral security assurances, which would become more enduring as the process proceeded; begin a study on North Korea’s energy requirements to see how to best meet them with non-nuclear energy programs; and begin a discussion of lifting all remaining U.S. sanctions against the North. In describing the talks before Congress, Assistant Secretary Kelly stressed that as North Korea undertook its obligation, the moves by the other parties would be temporary and "would only yield lasting benefits to [North Korea] after the dismantlement of its nuclear program had been completed."

North Korea has not formally responded to this offer. Washington insists that it must be the starting point for any future negotiations.