The Bush administration has been taking a pummelling from fellow US conservatives who assert that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has given no sign of giving up his nuclear weapons and that negotiating with his regime is a waste of time. So far, however, the Bush-bashing seems to have had little effect. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week that the United States would continue trying to engage the North Koreans, along with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia in six-party talks. The latest round began right after New Year's Day when Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar specialising in North Korea at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, wrote in USA Today: 'Once and for all, can we please stop pretending that Kim Jong-il is negotiating with us in good faith?' The only surprise about a North Korean failure to declare all its nuclear programmes by the end of the year - as it had agreed - he contended, 'is Washington's seemingly unending tolerance for this diplomatic masquerade'. Several days later, John Bolton, who until recently was President George W. Bush's ambassador to the UN, let loose another blast. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he concluded: 'We are going nowhere fast in denuclearising North Korea.' Those shots came from outside the administration. An even more withering flare came from inside, when a senior State Department official, Jay Lefkowitz, told an American Enterprise Institute audience that 'North Korea is not serious about disarming in a timely manner'. Mr Lefkowitz, the US special envoy for human rights in North Korea, said that Pyongyang's 'conduct does not appear to be that of a government that is willing to come in from the cold'. He added that 'it is increasingly clear that North Korea will remain in its present nuclear status when the administration leaves office in one year'. Mr Lefkowitz criticised China and South Korea for failing to press Mr Kim to give up nuclear weapons. China, he argued, 'has not seriously pushed North Korea to abandon its weapons programmes, and its assistance programmes and trade with North Korea have persisted with only brief interruptions'. He said that 'Beijing does not want a precipitous collapse of the North Korean government, which could cause a refugee influx and instability in its border region'. Dr Rice, when questioned on the matter, was pointed in rebutting Mr Lefkowitz: 'I can tell you in no uncertain terms that he wasn't [speaking for the administration]. He's the human rights envoy. That's what he knows. That's what he does. He doesn't work on the six-party talks. He doesn't know what is going on in the six-party talks and he certainly has no say in what American policy will be.' But neither Dr Rice nor her spokesmen could give assurances that Mr Kim was ready to surrender the six to eight nuclear bombs he is thought to have stored somewhere. Richard Halloran is a former New York Times foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington
