SEOUL (AFP) - Efforts to end North Korea's nuclear weapons drive will figure prominently when US President George W. Bush meets with Asia-Pacific leaders in Chile from Saturday.
Newly elected for a second term, Bush will be exposed to pressure at the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit to step up his work-rate on resolving the biggest threat to security in the region and a major challenge to world peace.
Talks with South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will help determine how the stand-off plays out over the coming weeks and month, analysts say.
Former human rights lawyer Roh, approaching the second anniversary of his election to office, has championed a soft line towards Pyongyang and China's Hu is expected to join him in nudging Bush down the path of conciliation.
Japan has more closely followed a tougher line advocated by the first Bush administration though Tokyo, hoping for progress on its own bilateral agenda with North Korea, has also been encouraging Washington to ease its stand.
The North Korean nuclear issue has twice figured prominently at previous APEC summits and twice Pyongyang has turned a deaf ear to appeals to abandon its nuclear weapons programmes.
At the APEC meeting last year in Bangkok, the 21 leaders called for a nuclear free Korean peninsula. More interestingly, they also said that North Korea's security concerns should be answered.
Pyongyang has justified its schemes to acquire nuclear weapons by saying that it is seeking a nuclear deterrent against the United States, which it accuses of planning to invade and overthrow the country's leadership.
It says it will abandon its nuclear weapons once Washington drops its hostile policy towards Pyongyang.
Pressure can be expected to mount on Bush to take a bigger step towards satisfying Pyongyang. Three rounds of multilateral talks have taken place since the stand-off erupted in October 2002 bringing together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States in Beijing.
North Korea boycotted a fourth round scheduled for Beijing in September in order to wait out the US presidential election in November, according to many analysts, when Bush triumphed over Democratic contender John Kerry.
Efforts are underway to lure North Korea back to a new round of talks and Roh, among other regional leaders, could use APEC to urge Bush to avoid using pressure to do so.
"During the summit presidents Roh and Bush may reaffirm the goal of peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue and promise to work for the reopening of nuclear talks at an early date," said an official at Roh's office.
Bush policy over the past two years of refusing to reward North Korea for breaking its international commitments by pursuing nuclear weapons has achieved little and Roh will push for more flexibility.
"What I would hope for is that in this context, this becomes an opportunity for... the leaders of these other countries to push on the Bush administration on being a little more flexible in these talks," said Edward Lincoln, Asia and Economic Studies senior fellow at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.
There may be limits to Washington's willingness to bend, however, without any reciprocal signal from Pyongyang.
At the last round of six-nation talks in June, Washington offered concessions to North Korea in return for the shutdown of the communist state's nuclear programmes.
That was a significant step back from Washington's previous demand for North Korea to scrap its programmes prior to any concessions.
"I think that the sense at this point is that the United States has given what it is going to give and it wants to see something in return," said Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia Studies at the council.
11/14/2004 - 03:27 GMT - AFP