North Korea begins talks with America but standoff remains

After six months of standoff, the US and North Korea opened talks in Beijing yesterday about Pyongyang's suspected secret nuclear weapons programme – but with scant prospect of an immediate breakthrough.

After the first of three scheduled days of meetings, in which China is also participating, James Kelly, the US Assistant Secretary of State, was tight-lipped. But officials here say the best to be expected is an agreement to hold further discussions.

At this early stage, insiders warn, the basic disagreement between the superpower and the country named by George Bush as a member of the "axis of evil" is as wide as ever North Korea is demanding aid and a cast-iron security guarantee from Washington while America insists that the alleged nuclear programmes be scrapped as a precondition for any meaningful negotiations.

But the fact that direct contacts are under way at all may attest to the shock effect on the North of the overwhelming US military victory in Iraq, combined with strong pressure from China, the regional power with the most influence on the secretive Communist state.

Japanese government officials described Pyongyang as "very nervous" before the meeting. Any jitters will not have been assuaged by the tough language of Colin Powell, the Secretary of State and the strongest advocate in the Bush administration for negotiations with the North. On the eve of the talks, General Powell declared the US would not be intimidated by the North and would do "whatever might be required" to deal with such a threat.

In an apparent response, Pyongyang ordered its air force to start long-distance flight training, a move aimed at countering the US air tactics used in the war in Iraq.

In December, North Korea restarted its nuclear facilities, expelled UN inspectors from suspect sites and withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Last week came the announcement that reprocessing had started of some 8,000 spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon reactor facility north of Pyongyang. That would enable the regime to produce enough plutonium for half a dozen nuclear devices. That statement was amended to say that it was "successfully going forward to reprocess" the rods, which fits in with intelligence assessments that the Yongbyon reprocessing plant is not yet operational.