AFP

Don't say cheese

IT WAS a hard-eyed, unemotional get-together. They had never met face-to-face, but once sparred dangerously. Bill Clinton, the unusually unsmiling former American president who had probably come closer to fighting North Korea than any president since the Korean war, was in Pyongyang to win the release of two female American journalists facing 12 years of hard labour. There he met Kim Jong Il, the grim-faced leader of arguably the world's most repressive regime and a defiant nuclear bomb-tester to boot.

Mr Kim is an ace non-smiler. In receiving Mr Clinton (he had turned down earlier suggested emissaries), he was out to show his people and the world that, despite rumours of ill health, his was a regime to be reckoned with, and that even powerful America would have to reckon with it. Mr Clinton, no doubt asked to do nothing to help Mr Kim's cause, was determined above all, well, not to smile.

Whether the normally affable Mr Clinton managed to stay poker-faced through the three hours and 15 minutes he and Mr Kim spent in each other's company (long enough, even with translation, for a chin-wag), his aides are not saying. North Korea says Mr Clinton apologised fulsomely for the actions of the two journalists who had strayed across its border from China. American officials deny any such apology was given. They also denied reports as news of the visit broke that Mr Clinton had brought a conciliatory message from President Barack Obama. His was a purely humanitarian visit.

Might it nonetheless herald a breakthrough in the diplomatic confrontation over North Korea's recent bomb and missile tests? Only Mr Kim knows. He is demanding bilateral talks with America. But the two had been having those intensively as part of six-party talks that include South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.

They stalled a year ago over the Bush administration's efforts to get Mr Kim to accept plausible verification of steps towards the dismantling of his nuclear programmes, for which he has been promised large dollops of aid. He was to stop making plutonium as well as suspected work on uranium. The plutonium preparation had restarted in 2003 after an earlier freeze deal, negotiated in 1994 with the Clinton administration, had collapsed because of evidence of cheating over uranium.

Mr Kim's verification tantrum was followed by what may have been a stroke. North Korea-watchers speculate that the ensuing hostility, including May's second bomb test (the first, which may have fizzled, was in 2006), was Mr Kim's way of ensuring the loyalty of the army to him and his third son, the chosen successor.

Yet by testing another nuclear device, declaring the six-party talks finished and demanding that the world deal with his country as a nuclear power, Mr Kim may have gone too far. Not only did he slap away the outstretched hand of the new Obama administration. He also angered China, his provider of last resort, which joined the condemnation of the latest nuclear and missile tests at the UN Security Council and even agreed to implement harsher sanctions.

China has reportedly encouraged one of its investment firms to pull out of a high-profile mining deal with a North Korean company that is now a target of UN sanctions. Chinese customs officials recently let it be known that they had stopped a shipment of vanadium, a metal that can be used as an alloy to strengthen missile casings. America is watching North Korea's ports—a ship thought to be carrying missiles or other banned exports to Myanmar earlier turned back after being shadowed for days at sea. And China and Russia are for the moment keeping a closer eye on land and possibly air routes. Perhaps Mr Kim has decided it is time to change tack and start talking again. Mr Clinton's visit could yet prove his face-saver. Something for Mr Kim, at least, to smile about?