HONOLULU -- North Korea has agreed to participate in a six-party working group meeting Wednesday in Beijing to help lay the groundwork for the third session of the more senior-level Six-Party Talks (North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States) expected before the end of June. The six had agreed "in principle" at the second plenary session in Beijing in late February to establish a working group to help with preparations for future plenary meetings, although no terms of reference were established and it remains unclear just what the working group will actually work on.

Washington has said its position remains unchanged as it goes into these working level talks: It seeks the "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" of North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons programs, or CVID for short. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, who heads the U.S. delegation at the plenary sessions, recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "that acronym and the important goal it represents [have] been accepted by all but the North Koreans."

While it is true that all parties (including North Korea) profess to seek a nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula and that they (except North Korea) at least pay lip serve to the CVID objective, it is not clear all agree on the definition of its components. Nor has Washington been specific as to what CVID fully entails.