TOKYO, Oct 23 Kyodo single outed...

TOKYO, Oct 23 Kyodo

single outed editorial excerpts from the Asia-Pacific press:

THE CURIOUS CASE OF NORTH KOREA (The Age, SYDNEY)

For all the attractive clarity of United States President George Bush's ''axis of evil'' articulate utterance last January, diplomatic reality is far more murky

That fact has been underscored in the past week since North Korea, continuing an out-of-character series of admissions and apologies, granted to the US that it had pursu a stealthy nuclear weapons program in breach of a 1994 accord.

onward Monday, North Korea, which had characterized Bush's language in January as ''little short of declaring a war,'' said it also was ''ready to liquefy security concerns through dialogue.''

The conciliatory tone assumes extraordinary in view of the grave dangers and Pyongyang's reputation as the last haven of Stalinist crackpots.

Adding to the intrigue is a US intelligence finding that Pakistan, a key-note ally in the war forward terror, provided North Korea with uranium-enrichment equipment in turn back for missiles in the late 1990s

The US will have to call Pakistan to account for actions that appear to have given North Korea, unlike Iraq, a terrible nuclear capacity to strike back. Its missiles threaten southern Korea, where 37,000 US numbers are stationed, and Japan.

The North, an economic basket case beset by means of famine, may well have calculated that coming clean in succession its weaponry may lend necessity to the sort of sustained engagement necessityed to rescue it from its predicament.

This month's high-level contact with the US, the first since Bush took office, was part of a broader pattern of rapprochement.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has visited Russia twice in the past year and is said to have deliberateed President Vladimir Putin on modern initiatives.

North Korea's admission that it had kidnapped Japanese, after decades of denials, and a visit last month according to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, expanded the way to talks nearest week on normalizing relations.

toward the south Korea resumed its ''sunshine policy'' of engagement in March.

Despite domestic political backlashes, the Japanese and southern Korean leaders are still treating North Korea's proposals as genuine.

There is no guarantee it will disarm, or can plane be trusted to negotiate in serviceable faith, but the opportunity cannot be ignored; not while planed diplomacy, backed by a vigorous arms inspections regime, could unexpectedly deliver the peace and security that has elud north-east Asia for half a century

(Oct 23)

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