North Korea nuclear talks end with no deal

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Jon Herskovitz
Multilateral talks on getting impoverished North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms programme in exchange for aid and better diplomatic standing ended on Thursday with no agreement.
Analysts say they expect little movement until President George W. Bush leaves office in January and is replaced by Barack Obama.
WAITING FOR OBAMA
North Korea has been in negotiations with the United States over its nuclear arms programme for about 15 years. It was in no rush to seal a deal before the Bush administration leaves office and it feels it will have the upper hand when a new, and perhaps inexperienced Obama team takes over in January.
North Korea would have only moved if it could have won a major concession from the Bush administration, such as a relatively unobtrusive verification deal limited to its well-known plutonium producing nuclear plant and a vague statement as to what inspectors can do on the ground.
North Korea does not like to be ignored and may try to force Obama's hand by raising tension by test-firing missiles, or, in an extreme measure, conducting another nuclear test.
THE SALAMI STRATEGY
The five parties in the nuclear talks with North Korea were looking to set in place a complete system for verifying claims Pyongyang made about its nuclear programme.
North Korea instead focused on the single issue of whether it will allow for nuclear samples to be removed from its territory. This move fits into an often-used North Korean tactic of slicing off a single issue from a large block in the same way that a deli slices off a piece of lunch meat.
Negotiators who have worked with North Korea call this "the salami strategy" and what usually happens is that movement on the larger issue will be slowed for months until the North gets a deal on the single slice.
Bottom line -- expect nuclear sampling to be the first task facing Obama and a resolution will not be coming any time soon.
* HALF A LOAF
The Bush administration has left Obama a workable, albeit imperfect disarmament deal. It has settled for half a loaf where the North is out of the plutonium production business but has not resolved the matter of inspections or addressed U.S. suspicions Pyongyang has a secret plan to enrich uranium for weapons and has proliferated technology to countries such as Syria.
Analysts have said the North's military threat is the only real bargaining power leader Kim Jong-il has, without risking his grip on power, to wring concessions from the outside world, and he is unlikely to dare give up nuclear weapons no matter what Obama does.
* NORTH KOREA KNOWS IT NEEDS AID
Cash-starved and energy-short North Korea needs heavy fuel oil aid and other incentives promised to it as part of the disarmament-for-aid deal it reached with the five regional powers to support its staggering economy. The North is even more dependent on this aid after having ended cooperation with South Korea, which was once one of its major benefactors.
North Korea is used to hardship but analysts do not think it will allow the nuclear talks to break down because it can ill afford to lose out on the aid.
The longer North Korea delays the disarmament process the more time it has to miniaturise a nuclear weapon so that it can be mounted on a warhead, and the more time it has to work on a second route for developing atomic arms by enriching uranium.
--Reuters