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The Six-Party Talks will reconvene this week after a nine-month hiatus. Although the agenda should be clear to all participants, there are conflicting messages from various capitals that threaten to distract the negotiators. Pyongyang says it is not prepared to move into phase 3 of the talks (i.e., nuclear dismantlement) until it receives all the energy assistance and political benefits it was promised under phase 2. Fair enough -- if North Korea means that it won’t start shipping spent nuclear fuel rods out of the country this summer. But this better not mean that Pyongyang will drag its feet on verification procedures or detailed planning for nuclear dismantlement. That can, and must, begin now.

Meanwhile, Washington and Beijing seem to be skipping past phase 3 at times and have mentioned issues that should only be considered once dismantlement is well under way. China’s ambassador to the UN, for example, suggested that his country will propose later this year the lifting of UN sanctions on North Korea that were imposed after the North’s nuclear test in October 2006. This is an action that should only be exchanged for the removal of nuclear material from North Korea, and that is nearly impossible before the end of the year, unless the process of removing, cooling, and packaging spent fuel from the mothballed Yongbyon reactor speeds up to an unimaginable degree.