Six-Party Talks are on a three-week recess;

Envoys to deadlocked North Korean nuclear talks will take a recess, the Chinese government announced Sunday, without giving a date for negotiations to resume. The decision was announced after chiefs of delegations from the six governments met for a 13th day on Sunday in a final attempt to agree on a joint statement of principles to guide future talks aimed at persuading North Korea to disarm… Diplomats say the talks are deadlocked over the North’s insistence on retaining a peaceful nuclear program, and over what it would get for giving up its atomic arms program.

South Korean news put a more positive spin on events;

China announced Sunday that the six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program will resume after a three-week recess. The talks will be restarted in the week starting Aug. 29… “They decided to have a brief recess so that the delegations can go back (and) report to their respective governments, further study each other’s positions and resolve differences which still exist… The purpose for us to have a temporary break is to climb to the top of the mountain more easily.”

But it all comes down to the same thing; North Korea wants rewards before nuclear disarmament (and abiding by all the agreements it already made to do so), while the U.S. refuses to provide any (more) assistance unless the DPRK gives up the nuclear weapons it says it has, agrees to inspections, etc.

While it has not come up much in the news, the only probable solution is exactly what happened in 1994, which was a “package deal,” conveniently put together by the North Koreans.

The North is also calling for a “nuclear-free” Korean peninsula, but at the same time saying they want nuclear power plants. They mean a nuclear weapon-free peninsula, of course. And nuclear power plants for North Korea make even less sense now than they did in 1994, since their infrastructure has deteriorated even more - they cannot deliver the electricity produced by large nuclear power plants and would be much better served by smaller, more numerous coal-burning plants.

We shall see what happens at the end of the months when talks resume. Unless a package deal idea is floated, it likely will remain the same. South Korean policy makers, ever hopeful of appeasement, are still delusional enough to thing North-South talks may do some magic.