President George W. Bush and senior officials in Japan, South Korea and Russia have expressed hopes that the talks -- at a time and venue still to be decided, could lance the poison from a highly unstable situation.

"We are hopeful that Mr. Kim Jong-Il ... will make a decision to totally dismantle his nuclear weapons program" in a verifiable manner," Bush said, referring to the North Korean leader on Friday.

"We're optimistic that that can happen."

But enthusiasm is tempered by the huge gulf separating the positions of the key players, North Korea and the United States.

There is as yet no sign that Pyongyang has decided it is ready to cede its nuclear weapons programs -- indeed, it seems to be going full steam ahead in the opposite direction.

And in Washington, there is no sign that the Bush administration is contemplating an easing of its refusal to buy off Pyongyang's programs.

Officials have argued that their hardline policy towards the Stalinist state has been vindicated by North Korea's agreement to come to the table and are in no hurry to let up the pressure.

Perhaps the best that can be expected from the talks, likely to take place in the next month or so in Beijing, is an agreement to meet again.

Robert Einhorn, a former senior State Department official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), welcomed Pyongyang's decision to join the talks.

But he cautioned : "with the North Koreans sounding increasingly as if they are determined to acquire and retain nuclear weapons, and the deeply divided Bush administration ambivalent at best about reaching an agreement with a regime it considers untrustworthy and repugnant, there is little basis for optimism about the next round of Beijing talks."

South Korea is expected to present a plan on the timing for the talks and initiatives designed to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear program in exchange for economic and security guarantees.

Within the US government, there are hopes that a wide range of voices in the talks, which will include China and Russia, as well as US allies South Korea and Japan, could trigger a change in North Korean behavior.

Even so, few analysts are prepared to bet on success.

"I think it is going to progress very slowly," said Balbina Hwang, a Korea specialist with the conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank.

"I wouldn't be surprised it the six-party talks ended in quote, unquote, disaster, meaning one party or the other just stomps out and there is a stalemate," she said.

"I think the best we can hope for at the end of the first initial meeting is to have a second meeting."

North Korea signalled Friday it would join the six-party talks after months of haggling over the format, an expanded version of three-party talks with the United States, China and North Korea in Beijing in April.

The crisis erupted when Washington revealed in October that North Korea had broken a 1994 accord and was running a nuclear program based on enriched uranium.

The North has since claimed it has reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods after reopening its nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, which was closed under the 1994 accord.

In regular and vitriolic commentaries, North Korea has claimed the Bush administration is intent on launching an invasion to overthrow its communist regime.

It has insisted that the United States first offer security guarantees to address the nuclear issue.

South Korea has proposed a solution that partially reflects Pyongyang's demands, including a security guarantee from Washington.

Bush has said Washington had no intention of attacking the Stalinist state and has promised significant US and international help once the North scraps its nuclear weapons drive.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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