Bush envoy will re-open links with North Korea

The United States will send a senior envoy to North Korea early next month for discussions on Pyongyang's missile, nuclear and arms export programmes. The move restores contacts abruptly broken by the Bush administration when it came to office 20 months ago.

The change of heart over a founder member of Mr Bush's "axis of evil" follows pleas from South Korea to Washington to relax the diplomatic freeze on the North. It is also an unexpectedly early response by the administration to a signal from Kim Jong Il himself – passed on by Japan's Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, who met the North Korean leader last week – that he wanted to improve ties with the US.

The envoy is likely to be James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Asian affairs. Plans for him to make a trip earlier this year were cancelled after naval clashes in which North Korean vessels entered the South's territorial waters in June.

On the face of it, Mr Bush's approach to North Korea totally contradicts his belligerent stance against Iraq – even though it is Pyongyang, not Baghdad, which the CIA reckons to have the capability to make one or two nuclear weapons, and which exports missile technology to other countries on the US black list.

But White House officials say the two cases are not identical. Saddam Hussein, who has flouted UN resolutions for a decade, is beyond redemption. A clear and present danger, they insist. On the other hand, Kim Jong Il has shown an increasing desire to end his impoverished country's international isolation.

One recent sign was a freeze on missile testing in the north Pacific, which has so alarmed the Japanese. Mr Koizumi's visit, when North Korea admitted and apologised for kidnapping 11 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, was a dramatic step towards reconciliation between longtime foes.

Finally, North Korea wants a capitalist free-trade zone in the north-west of the country in which Japan, South Korea and China would be the prime investors – part of wider economic reforms for which a US blessing is essential.