In the campaign leading up to the November 7 voting, the Democrats accused the Republicans for refusing to negotiate directly with North Korea. In doing so, they conveniently overlooked the fact that the 1994 Agreed Framework signed between the Clinton administration with the North, designed to stop it from moving ahead on its plutonium-extraction operation, failed to achieve its purpose, largely because of Pyongyang's subterfuge. Even while the U.S., South Korea and Japan were building the lightwater reactor plant under this accord, the Kim Jong Il regime was moving secretly to develop a uranium-enrichment program.

Direct negotiation with the North will be a long, drawn-out process taking years of exhaustive talks which will enable it to produce more bombs. It is useful to remember that it took three long years to negotiate an end to the Korean War. Two-way talks are intended to leave South Korea out of the process, allowing the Kim Jong Il regime to acquire a measure of legitimacy and drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul.

That's the formula which North Vietnam used successfully at the Paris peace talks leading up to withdrawal of American troops. They then launched a lightening attack on Saigon. Judging by their continuing attempts at subverting the South and penetrating it with agents for this purpose, North Korea hasn't given up the idea of retaking the South by violent means.

Besides, the issue of proliferation is not a bilateral matter. It should involve all regional powers such as the U.S., Japan, China and Russia for the simple reason that they should be the guarantors of the peace process on the Korean peninsula. The North Korean nuclear threat is too serious a matter to be made a subject of partisan squabbling in Washington.