This week, the Bush Administration bowed to the chorus of international demands for U.S. engagement and agreed to talks with North Korea. Secretary of State Powell conceded that "we have made it clear we have no aggressive intent", toward North Korea, another nod to Pyongyang's demands for a non-aggression pact with the United States. After having insisted the United States would never again play the nuclear extortion game with North Korea, the Administration has not only agreed to play, it has allowed North Korea to set the rules.

In hindsight, America's fatal error is clear; we confronted North Korea over its illegal uranium enrichment program, never expecting a frank admission of guilt. In receipt of that admission, we pondered over our next step in secret, never expecting North Korea to go public. Righteously indignant, we were once again surprised to find that South Korea, Japan and China did not seem to share our indignation. In all this time, never once did the Administration appear to have a plan to deal with the problem.

Most recently, within 24 hours of Powell's decision to soothe tensions and proclaim the U.S. commitment to diplomacy, North Korea announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Seeing the U.S. in retreat, North Korea resorted to form and upped the ante. Powell should expect to be slapped in the face again.

The United States is in a difficult position. We are focused on Iraq and all of Washington's political, military and diplomatic eggs are in that basket. Colin Powell's most important task is to move North Korea to a back burner and allow the President the maneuvering room to dispose of Saddam Hussein. Where he went wrong was in assuming North Korea would cooperate with his efforts to defuse tensions. Nuclear brinksmanship worked for Pyongyang once, and Kim Jong Il appears determined to make it work again.

Many around Asia and veterans of the Clinton Administration around Washington are urging the Bush Administration to make a new deal with North Korea. South Korea has pressed Washington and Pyongyang to be ready to make concessions (as if somehow there were guilt on both sides). The time has come for Bush and Powell to stop dancing around the problem and confront it head on.

The real solution, of course, is to support regime change in North Korea. Nuclear weapons, missile exports and support for terrorism are horrors Kim Jong Il inflicts on the outside world. His treatment of his own people and a bloody record of starvation and murder will be his legacy at home. Sadly, however, neither South Korea nor the United States (to say nothing of China) appears to have the stomach for a sustained campaign to oust the world's last Stalinist dictator. Step by step diplomacy will have to suffice.

First, South Korea, Japan, China and others must be reminded that a nuclear North Korea, while a concern to the United States and a threat to our 37,000 troops on the Korean peninsula, is a much smaller problem for us than it is for them. We, after all, can leave.

Second, the United States should stop bullying the International Atomic Energy Agency to delay action on North Korea's breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (to which it was then a party), and allow the IAEA to refer the North Korea nuclear problem to the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council should slap an immediate embargo on North Korean exports--chiefly missiles and missile components.

Third, the Bush Administration must state without equivocation that the 1994 Agreed Framework is dead. Given all that we have learned about North Korea's nuclear ambitions, Washington should under no circumstances be party to an agreement that provides nuclear reactors to North Korea.

Fourth, North Korea must understand what is required in clear and uncompromising language: Full and verifiable dismantlement of its nuclear program and an end to Pyongyang's proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. Only then can other nations consider the kind of large-scale assistance North Korea so desperately desires.

Finally, no nation can be complicit in the maintenance of one of the world's most brutal dictators. Kim Jong Il must demonstrate systemic improvements in his human rights record and he must open his borders--preferably in coordination with a Chinese decision to open its borders--and allow his imprisoned people to leave.

It is possible that the Bush Administration will decide against these firm demands and instead replay the 1990s, ignoring agreements and appeasing North Korea's ever-escalating demands. But for as long as North Korea has nuclear weapons, the world will face a regular cycle of threat and demands. It worked once, it may work twice; no one knows when it will stop working. The time has come to take the nuclear card from North Korea's hands, one way, or if necessary, another.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI.