The search for a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear stalemate with North Korea is going nowhere. Even if China succeeds in convening a third round of six-party talks, significant progress is unlikely unless North Korea and the US are both prepared to abandon their unrealistic main demands.

North Korea would have to withdraw its demand for a US "no-attack" commitment, even though it is not unreasonable to ask for one in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. The political reality is that no American president could responsibly give North Korea the security guarantee that it wants since, as a closed society, it could cheat on even the best crafted nuclear settlement.

The presence of US conventional and nuclear forces in the Pacific is a powerful deterrent to a North Korean attack against South Korea, Japan or the US. Still, no US president could rule out a second strike in the unlikely event of such an attack, especially if North Korea possesses nuclear weapons in violation of an agreement.

The Bush administration is equally unrealistic in demanding that North Korea make a binding commitment to the "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling" of its nuclear weapons programme at the outset without specifying what it would do in return. From the North Korean perspective, nuclear weapons are needed to deter a US attack so it would not be logical for it to dismantle its nuclear programme until relations with the US demonstrably improve.

What is needed is a fresh start. The US, for its part, should normalise relations with North Korea, remove the economic sanctions that have been in place since the Korean war and encourage multilateral aid to Pyongyang. Instead of treating recognition and normalised relations as a reward for good behaviour, Washington should use them as stepping stones towards resolving the nuclear problem.

This would ease US tensions with South Korea, where President Roh Moo

Hyun has just won a strong electoral mandate for the continued pursuit of closer ties with North Korea, including economic aid, without waiting for the resolution of the nuclear issue.

Moving directly to normalisation would also greatly improve the climate for agreeing on trade-offs in the six-party negotiations. The US could start by pressing Pyongyang to make its offer to freeze its plutonium programme credible and enforceable. The US and North Korea's neighbours could provide conventional energy aid if Pyongyang agreed to an inspection process that would confirm how much of its plutonium has been reprocessed and place this plutonium under airtight controls.

It has now been firmly established that North Korea does have an unknown quantity of reprocessed plutonium that could conceivably be sold to terrorist groups. But it is uncertain whether and when Pyongyang might be able to enrich uranium to weapons grade. A plutonium freeze should thus be the US priority in the negotiations, followed by incremental US aid tied to verifiable North Korean steps toward complete denuclearisation.

Normalisation would not only make denuclearisation more likely but would also promote the US objective of opening and liberalising the repressive North Korea system. Kim Jong Il, the nation's leader, has recently initiated significant economic reforms. But US efforts to undermine Pyongyang economically with the purpose of hampering its nuclear programme make it harder for these reforms to succeed.

Recent signals from Pyongyang suggest that it might well be prepared to give up its demand for a security guarantee, if that would break the present deadlock. Pyongyang is divided between pragmatists aligned with Mr Kim, who want a nuclear settlement for economic reasons, and hardliners who argue that a US security guarantee would be a meaningless piece of paper. The presence of resident US diplomats and businessmen in Pyongyang after normalisation, they say, would be a more reliable deterrent to an American pre-emptive strike.

North Korea is not likely to give up its nuclear weapons programme until President George W. Bush backs away from his statement that he "loathes" Mr Kim and would like to "topple" his regime. Visiting North Korean officials emphasised this point during a recent dialogue with American scholars of Korea. "If the US shows us that it is ready for co-existence, the nuclear problem can be resolved," said Jo Sung Su, American affairs director in the foreign ministry. "Why would we need nuclear weapons if we no longer feel threatened? It is as simple as that."

The writer is director of the Asia programme at the Center for International Policy, and author of Korean Endgame.