The US have yet to notice that a nuclear North Korea changes the game.

The North Korean official was bluntly unrepentant:

The official said the nuclear test was "an expression of our intention to face the US across the negotiating table".

A member of the North Korean Assembly, Ri Jong Hyok, defended the test during a visit to the European Union in Brussels. "Whenever we take measures it is not necessary for us to look the others in the face. Every country has its own interest, no country can represent our interest," he said, adding: "We have to take these measures so that we have a nuclear deterrent against the Americans."

It's always hard when people speak in these terms not to hear echoes of Bush's statement that the US does not need "a permission slip to defend itself". Of course when Bush spoke in those terms many on the right thought he was being resolute and strong. Now that a similar tone is being struck by North Korea the Bushites want us to feel outraged that anyone could propose defying the same international community that the US treated with such open contempt.

It is also notable that the North Koreans are identifying the US as the sole reason that they possess a nuclear weapon. For months now Pyongyang has been offering to give up it's nuclear ambitions if the US will only reassure it that they have no intention of attacking them and prove this by signing a non aggression pact, something that the Cheney administration have found impossible to agree to.

Yesterday, belatedly, Condi offered this:

"The USA doesn't have any intention to attack North Korea or to invade North Korea," she said.

But Condi is notably offering no face to face talks and there is no sign of any non-aggression pact. Instead, the Cheney administration are ploughing on with their plan that the North Koreans must give up all their nuclear ambitions before any talks can take place. Given the fact that the North Koreans now possess a nuclear weapon this is little more than a fools errand.

The fact that the North Koreans have labelled their desire to obtain a nuclear weapon, "an expression of our intention to face the US across the negotiating table", seems to underline the point North Korea have always been making to the US: negotiate.

The Bushites are now attempting to punish North Korea by imposing sanctions through the Security Council. And, rather pointedly, the same people that Condi reassures us have no intention of attacking or invading North Korea, are seeking a Chapter VII resolution which allows the use of force.

China, who are reportedly furious at the behaviour of their wayward neighbour, immediately stressed that any reaction from the international community should be "appropriate".

The use of the word "appropriate" immediately signalled that the US were overplaying their hand and that China would not play along with any resolution that gave the US a tacit nod to invade or attack by invoking a Chapter VII resolution.

So the Council was left yesterday haggling over what these sanctions should consist of:

A security council source said there was the usual "shoving and pushing". He said that while there had been agreement on Monday condemning the weapons test, the meetings yesterday were about the "nitty-gritty" of how to respond.

One of the toughest sanctions would allow the UN to stop any North Korean ship on the high seas to search for nuclear technology, a potential flashpoint.

Mark Fitzpatrick, a specialist in proliferation at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, warned of the dangers. "The first time a North Korean ship refuses to stop there could be an incident and that could spiral," he said.

Another proposal is for a ban on travel and luxury goods, both targeted at Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, his family and others in the regime. Other sanctions under discussion are to put a squeeze on its overseas finances and to extend a ban on missile technology, imposed in July, to include other military hardware and training.

Members unanimously rejected broad sanctions that would hurt the already impoverished population.

In the end we are likely to see sanctions of luxury goods and some financial and travel restrictions for North Korean officials, hardly the sort of punishment that would encourage North Korea to strip itself of it's nuclear arsenal.

So the Cheney administration find themselves in the same corner they have been in since the day they entered office: either negotiate with Pyongyang or accept the reality of a nuclear North Korea.

Their answer to the United Nations came from the bullish John Bolton, 'This is the way North Korea typically negotiates by threat and intimidation. It's worked for them before. It won't work for them now.'

The saddest thing about that response, apart from Bolton's inability to realise that it was his own country's "threats and intimidation's" that led us to this impasse, is his comment that, "It won't work for them now."

It already has, John. It already has.

Bolton continues to behave as if the neo-con philosophy works, and that reality can be changed by the sheer force of American will, even whilst he's facing a new reality that his administration's stubbornness has helped to form.

When the neo-cons fall from grace, as they surely will, future generations will marvel that people of such profound stupidity were ever left in charge of the most powerful nation on Earth.

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