The United States will instead, as I have been predicting, defer to the regional powers:

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration said Friday that it wasn’t interested in one-on-one talks with North Korea about its nuclear programs outside the six-party negotiations involving the communist nation’s neighbors.

“It’s not an issue between North Korea and the United States. It’s a regional issue,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. “And it’s an issue that impacts all of its neighbors.”

North Korea has plenty of opportunity to talk to the United States within six-party talks, McClellan said.

In an interview with a South Korean newspaper Friday, North Korea’s U.N. envoy demanded bilateral talks with the United States.

“We will return to the six-nation talks when we see a reason to do so and the conditions are ripe,” Han Sung Ryol told Seoul’s Hankyoreh newspaper in an interview published Friday. “If the United States moves to have direct dialogue with us, we can take that as a signal that the United States is changing its hostile policy toward us.”

Demanding bilateral talks over multilateral? I think that’s because the know, if a decision is made, we will be much easier on them than someone like China. What we are witnessing, however, is an incredible shift of U.S. policy that is moving us away from what the world has been complaining about (world policeman) and instead forcing all of the other countries to step up to the plate with problems in their respective regions. This can be said about India and the crisis in Nepal. It can be said about Israel and the Palestinians, along with other issues in South America. The U.S. still remains involved in all of these, the difference is that we will not be the judging factor on what decisions are made. A very wise move, I think, and one that will ease relations and encourage democratic growth.