Who is to 'get serious'?

After five days of talking (mostly past each other) the six parties called it quits without even a joint statement or a date for the resumption of the talks. It is clear the Six Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program are achieving nothing, except perhaps a better understanding between the U.S. and China, and again perhaps that is not such a bad thing.

But the talks are certainly not leading to the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which is supposedly their aim.

U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill called on the North Koreans “to get serious”. But in fact it is the U.S. which has “to get serious”. At the end of the last phase in the talks in December 2005, the DPRK agreed in principle to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. But a few days later the U.S. began pushing other countries to freeze North Korean funds. For a year the DPRK refused to return to the negotiating table and in the meantime tested a nuclear weapon. During the past five days, the DPRK negotiators only wanted to talk finance, not nuclear arms.

By bringing up the so-called 'money problem', it is the U.S. which is deliberately undermining the talks. The result is that the DPRK can keep its bomb and make even more bombs in the meantime. And perhaps even conduct another test. It is the attitude of the U.S. which is not 'serious'.