Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - As senior diplomats arrive in Beijing for long-awaited multi-lateral talks on North Korea''s nuclear program, expectations are low for any quick resolution to the crisis or speedy restoration of trust between the two key players.

Delegations from the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia are scheduled to sit down for three days of talks, beginning Wednesday.

Both Russia and South Korea have already played down hopes for a breakthrough, with Russian delegation head, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, hinting that the emphasis may need to be on keeping the participants talking.

U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, said his team was looking forward to a direct and fair exchange of views.

At the last talks aimed at ending the now 10-month-old standoff, in Beijing last April, the North Koreans reportedly told Kelly that they had nuclear weapons and were prepared to make more and to export them.

That meeting, which involved only the U.S., North Korea and the host nation, ended abruptly.

Ahead of this week''s talks, U.S. officials have said the agenda may be widened to include concerns about Pyongyang''s chemical and germ warfare capabilities and missile development.

For its part, Japan said it intends to bring up North Korea''s missile threats and unresolved issues relating to the communist state''s abduction of Japanese citizens three decades ago.

North Korea has warned that the abduction issue was not on the table, and apart from the U.S. - which has taken a non-committal position - none of the other parties have backed Japan on the matter.

Trust lacking

Leading experts on Korea in general do not envisage any speedy resolution to the nuclear crisis, and have cautioned about Pyongyang''s trustworthiness.

Even supposedly "successful" talks on the nuclear issue could leave the North continuing to develop nuclear programs clandestinely, argued Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

"Negotiations can help, but ultimately the United States and its allies will still have to rely on deterrence and defense," he said.

Cordesman also argued that the emphasis on nuclear issues ignored the chemical, biological and missile-related threats posed by North Korea.

A former U.S. ambassador to Seoul, Stephen Bosworth, told a South Korean daily it was difficult to envisage any breakthrough occurring this week - and in the longer term, a solution would depend on whether Kim Jong-il was willing to submit to nuclear inspections.

"If North Korea does not allow inspections, there simply won''t be an agreement," he said. "You can''t sign an agreement with North Korea based on trust."

Another analyst not expecting any advance is CSIS senior advisor Robert Einhorn.

"With the North Koreans sounding increasingly as if they are determined to acquire and retain nuclear weapons, and the deeply divided Bush administration ambivalent at best about reaching an agreement with a regime it considers untrustworthy and repugnant, there is little basis for optimism about the next round of Beijing talks," he said in a statement.

It''s been reported widely in recent months that U.S. government officials are split over how to handle North Korea.

Just before the trilateral Beijing talks last April, the State Department was forced to defend its choice of Kelly as delegation head amid reports that the Pentagon preferred another top diplomat, Undersecretary of State for arms control John Bolton, in that role.

Bolton, who is described by liberal as a "hard-liner," gave a speech in Seoul late last month in which he described North Korea as a place where "life is a hellish nightmare" and called Kim a tyrant - drawing an angry response from Pyongyang.

The resignation last Friday of a senior State Department expert on Korea, Jack Pritchard, prompted further speculation about internal differences, although State Department spokesman Philip Reeker denied at a press briefing Monday that his departure was linked to policy.

Pritchard, who has been identified with a more conciliatory approach, has long been the U.S. point man for contacts with North Korean diplomats at the U.N. in New York.

"Appeasement'' vs. regime change

The reported differences among administration officials relate in part to how to respond to Pyongyang''s insistence for a "non-aggression pact" with Washington in return for abandoning its nuclear programs.

Secretary of State Colin Powell recently suggested that the U.S. could provide "assurances" of no hostile intent to the North Koreans, short of the treaty they are demanding.

Center for Security Policy president Frank J. Gaffney commented that any such move "would amount to U.S. affirmation of the legitimacy of what is, arguably, the most odious government on the planet."

"Worse yet," he wrote in a National Review Online article, "it is predictable that this monumental concession will be accompanied by U.S. taxpayer-underwritten financial, food, trade, and perhaps technological assistance that will have the effect of perpetuating for the foreseeable future the world''s last, unabashedly Stalinist totalitarian regime."

Gaffney said this "appeasement" would shut the only avenue that holds any prospect of ending the nuclear threat - regime change.

Also promoting regime change in Pyongyang is former CIA director James Woolsey, who repeated that view during a press conference in Seoul on Monday .

Woolsey said regime change was the only credible alternative to military action, and it was in China''s interests in particular to exert pressure on North Korea to achieve that goal.

"China could end up with not one, but with four nuclear powers around it if it shirks its interest in this matter," he said, referring to the view that a nuclear-armed North Korea could trigger a regional nuclear arms race, with Japan, South Korea and possibly Taiwan going the nuclear route.

Woolsey also said agreements with North Korea were "worse than worthless" as Kim Jong-il was a leader whom "no reasonable individual could trust."

Meanwhile Richard C. Bush, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, has warned that Pyongyang''s insistence on a non-aggression pact may be "a trap."

In an article last week, he said the North Koreans may be planning to try put U.S. forces in Northeast Asia on the negotiating table.

By doing so, he said, they could attempt to exploit the division that exists in South Korean society about the need for the U.S. military deterrent against the North, in a bid to split the U.S.-South Korean alliance.

Bush said U.S negotiators should anticipate this possibility, and Washington should also consult with Seoul in order to pre-empt any such move by the North Koreans.

Ralph Cossa, president of the CSIS''s Pacific Forum, said it remained to be seen whether the North Koreans intended to negotiate a resolution to the crisis, or would merely use the talks as "one more venue for making its unreasonable demands and one more opportunity to drive a wedge among and between the other participants."

While North Korea''s agreement to attend multi-party rather than bilateral talks was in line with Washington''s demands, he said, the presence at the talks of the other four players may cause difficulties.

China, Russia, Japan and South Korea all agreed the North must abandon the nuclear option, but at the same time "most are more sympathetic than Washington to Pyongyang''s demand that it receive economic incentives and some measure of security assurance in return."

"Hold off on the champagne for now," Cossa advised. "The hard part is just about to begin." See earlier story.

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