In recent speeches and op-ed pieces, Condi Rice has emphasized that the North Koreans' plutonium is the most dangerous threat and thus that halting their program should be an agreement's core objective. She is right, but this emphasis reinforces the widespread reports that the agreement doesn't affect much besides plutonium. In a June 26 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Rice acknowledged, "Getting a handle on North Korea's uranium-enrichment program is harder, because we simply do not know its full scale. … North Korea acknowledges our concerns" about the issue. This is a reference to a side agreement made in Singapore, in which the North Koreans literally acknowledged our concerns. Period. The end. The North Koreans have said that anything they did involving the pursuit of enriched uranium (they have admitted to acquiring gas centrifuges) did not amount to a "program." Perhaps they're right. But the North Koreans did commit, back in September 2005, to "abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." If the point of the step-by-step negotiations is to reach this point, and to do so in a complete and verifiable fashion, then those other programs, having nothing to do with plutonium, are going to have to enter into the talks at some point.