That is the game being played out between America and North Korea in efforts to end the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Why won't China rein in North Korea in the current nuclear crisis?
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Beyond this latest attempt to restrain North Korea, the burgeoning nuclear crisis has so frustrated the U.S. and China that they are forming a new and tentative bond with the potential to carry over into areas that have vexed them for decades.
But America is keen for it to take up the issue, partly as a way of holding North Korea to account for its treaty breaches, but also to ensure that, unlike in 1993 when North Korea last provoked a nuclear crisis, its neighbours will not simply stand back and leave America to do all the negotiating.
China is potentially a key player in efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis in North Korea, its neighbour and ally.
This might make military sense, but Mr Roh worries it will send the wrong signal to North Korea, at least until the nuclear crisis is resolved.
North Korea and the United States were on opposite sides in the 1950-1953 Korean War and had no regular contacts before a 1994 crisis over North Korea's nuclear program.
She also said South Korea was at "crisis level", following the recent underground test by North Korea of a nuclear device and its launch of a three-stage rocket, both of which were seen as a breach of UN resolutions and condemned as a threat to stability in the region.
In 1994, former President Jimmy Carter traveled to North Korea, during Bill Clinton's own administration, to negotiate an end to the first North Korean nuclear crisis.
CNN: Analysis: Clinton to North Korea -- a matter of respect
Then-President Clinton used former President Jimmy Carter to travel to North Korea in 1994 to negotiate the end to the first nuclear crisis.
Revere said the latest crisis had made acceptance of a nuclear North Korea even more unconscionable.
Pyongyang sees the nuclear crisis as a U.S.-North Korea issue, Delury said.
The rest of the world is equally anxious about the current stand-off over Iraq, the crisis caused by North Korea's newly aggressive stand on nuclear weapons, and the war on terrorism.
He added that the current North Korea crisis had shown world leaders what could happen when a rogue state acquired nuclear weapons.
Analysts said Kim's death poses an immediate and serious foreign policy crisis for Washington and its allies, given nuclear-armed North Korea's history of belligerence.
"The deal" just struck with North Korea is not going to end the crisis there or discourage others from pursuing nuclear ambitions as a means of obtaining more favorable treatment from the United States.
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