Negotiating with North Korea only lends Kim Jong-il prestige

The latest extreme provocations by North Korea call for a new and very special kind of response. In the past week the rogue state has detonated a nuclear bomb and launched ballistic missiles in violation of UN Security Council prohibitions.

It followed this with a threat to South Korea by repudiating the July 1953 armistice agreement, which ostensibly renews the state of war with Korea, the United States and Britain too for that matter.

Only an actual shooting attack could exceed this level of provocation - yet the only possible response must be diplomatic. And only a very special kind of diplomacy can possibly yield positive results: a diplomacy of silence.

Negotiations with North Korea have never yielded anything of significance

Under it, no communications whatever would be sent to the North Korean regime, there would be no dialogue with any North Korean diplomat anywhere and above all, no attempt would be made to renew negotiations in any format.

This would contradict all the usual doctrines and preferences of diplomats. Their instinct is to talk with every adversary with whom it is possible to talk at all - the historically inclined can cite even pugnacious Churchill's dictum that it is always better to "jaw-jaw than war-war".

More simply, when there is no diplomatic recognition to be traded in exchange for concessions, diplomats operate on the assumption that talking is always a good idea because words cost nothing, and they can sometimes produce results that are worth at least something if only a little - and perhaps much more than that.

But not this time. For years, the United States, China, the Russian Federation, Japan and South Korea have been patiently negotiating with North Korea, offering economic aid, security guarantees and all the benefits of "normalisation" in exchange for the abandonment of its nuclear programs.

South Korea provided large advance payments in the form of investments, food aid, and large cash gifts. And for years, while the military dictatorship of the bizarre Kim Jong-il continued to starve its own population to accumulate yet more military equipment - millions have actually died of hunger - and repeatedly sold nuclear and missile technology to Iran and Syria, it was very greatly rewarded diplomatically.

Kim Jong-il's delegates sat alongside those of the United States, China, Russia and Japan - a huge concession which added to the prestige of the regime. Every time the North Koreans committed a new outrage, from launching ballistic missiles over Japan to selling weapons to terrorists, the response was to resume the talks, without any demand for concessions. Sometimes South Korea even offered more gifts.

This must now stop. Negotiations with the North Korean regime have never yielded anything of significance for Seoul or the West. The latest provocation must not be rewarded. The North Korean aim is to evoke more attention, more offers of concessions, more gifts. They must receive nothing at all.

Talking has failed. Silence might yet persuade the North Koreans to improve their behavior.