WASHINGTON -- As the six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear program resume late this month, the outlook for success remains as poor as ever. The Bush administration continues to take a firm stand, insisting on complete, verifiable and irreversible North Korean nuclear disarmament before any discussions on broader issues such as economic aid or the lifting of trade sanctions. North Korea, with few national assets besides its nuclear program to bargain with, appears loath to give the nukes up without getting something substantial for them.

Meanwhile, the core logic of the six-party talks is not working very well. President George W. Bush's idea was that the United States as well as South Korea, Japan, China and Russia would together pressure North Korea to comply with its existing obligations under three separate treaties not to develop nuclear weapons.

This approach sounds logical, but it is failing in large part because China and South Korea in particular find Washington's approach to negotiations too inflexible. Partly as a result of the fiasco over U.S. intelligence estimates of Iraqi weapons capabilities, they have also begun to doubt American claims that North Korea even has an underground uranium-enrichment program -- the discovery of which led to the current nuclear crisis in the first place.