WASHINGTON - No one expected a breakthrough in the talks in Beijing last week among the United States, North Korea and China on resolving the North Korean nuclear problem, and none was forthcoming. Instead, the meetings were predictably sterile, unexpectedly truncated, and marked by the paradoxical combination of bellicose bluster and hints of possible deals we have come to expect from Pyongyang.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss the talks as a farce or a failure, as many inside the Beltway have. On the contrary, the United States made important progress toward stability in Northeast Asia. In fact, the North Koreans' behavior probably alienated their previously sympathetic Chinese hosts, and may have strengthened America's hand globally in the dispute. In addition, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has now revealed that North Korea offered a plan to take steps in dismantling its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for economic and security benefits.

In no event did the talks change any of the fundamentals. That is, North Korea still requires urgent and sustained attention, and the range of options for dealing with it remains unappetizing.  The current crisis began last October when North Korea admitted that it has a program to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. In doing so, it tacitly confessed that it had been cheating on the so-called Agreed Framework of 1994. In the ensuing weeks, North Korea took increasingly provocative steps, including expelling the international inspectors who were monitoring its nuclear facilities, restarting a nuclear reactor that could produce more plutonium, and withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

With each step, it moved closer to becoming a full-fledged nuclear weapons state.  The United States has responded by asserting that it wants to resolve this increasingly dangerous situation through diplomacy if possible, but repeatedly noting that it has not taken any options off the table. It has also insisted that it will not pay blackmail - that is, it will not reward North Korean cheating by offering inducements for Pyongyang to come back into compliance with its existing obligations.

Put differently, paying for a return to the terms of 1994 Agreed Framework is not an acceptable option. Finally, the United States has maintained that any engagement with North Korea must be multilateral, and explicitly ruled out direct, one-on-one talks with Pyongyang.

Up until the Beijing talks, the other concerned parties - particularly South Korea, Japan and China - had been urging the United States not to let form get in the way of substance, and had been pressing Washington to agree to direct talks. The United States resisted, insisting that any lasting solution to the North Korean problem could be achieved only if Pyongyang's neighbors were involved in talks. It has also been urging the Chinese to use their influence to get North Korea to halt (and, ideally, reverse) its march down the nuclear road, and also to agree to multilateral talks.

Considered against this backdrop, the talks in Beijing should be chalked up as a success for the American approach, and a testament to effective American leadership. Most important, the Chinese role has changed. In response to United States requests, China has gone from its more familiar posture of sitting on the sidelines of controversial international security issues to playing an active and constructive role. Indeed, there is little doubt that the North Koreans would have refused to come to the table had the People's Republic not all but directed them to do so, a point the Chinese underscored by suspending critical fuel shipments to North Korea for several days. (There also are reports that Beijing told Pyongyang not to cross the red line of reprocessing its spent fuel to extract more plutonium.)

And the Chinese did not simply convene the meeting, but participated actively, making the talks multilateral in fact as well as form.  Moreover, the decision by China to play host to the talks gave it a major stake in a resolution of the issue, and the North Koreans' behavior during those meetings - which deeply embarrassed the Chinese -improves the odds that Beijing will continue to use its leverage on the North.

These developments are significant, not least because it is difficult to imagine any lasting resolution of the North Korean problem that does not involve China, as well as South Korea and Japan. At the same time, we should not lose sight of two key points. First, the Beijing talks shed little light on whether North Korea would be willing under any reasonable set of circumstances to abandon its programs in nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Second, it remains in the American interest to pursue multilateral engagement with North Korea to try to find out the answer.

United States objectives likewise remain the same. We will not pay blackmail, and we will not buy the same horse twice. But we do want to stop North Korea from being a threat to peace and security in northeastern Asia and a supplier of weapons of mass destruction elsewhere. To realize these goals, we must dismantle the North Korean nuclear and missile programs in a way that is realistically irreversible and verifiable.

In return, we should be willing to join with others in providing credible assurances to North Korea that it need have no concern about its own security, so long as it does not threaten others. We should also make clear that we would be prepared to take a leading role in ending North Korea's political and economic isolation. Such a proposal would be a deal about a whole new horse, going far beyond the 1994 Agreed Framework.

As for North Korea's intentions and objectives, the Beijing talks offered confusing and contradictory hints. Only when there are serious negotiations to make clear both what we and the other concerned parties require of North Korea, and what we are prepared to do in return, will we get to the bottom line.

The United States accordingly should make clear that it is prepared to continue its policy of engagement with the North (to be expanded as soon as possible to include South Korea and Japan) with a view to negotiating a peaceful resolution. This willingness, however, will be predicated on a freeze in North Korea's nuclear and missile activities. We can press the case that if the North Koreans are serious about putting those programs on hold, we would reciprocate with respect to our military forces in and around the Korean peninsula. But if North Korea continues to expand its nuclear activities and, in particular, if it pursues the reprocessing of its spent fuel rods, the United States will have no choice but to fundamentally reassess its commitment to a diplomatic resolution.

There is no assurance that Pyongyang will respond positively to such an approach, much less that negotiations will be successful. On the contrary, history gives rise more to pessimism than hope. But even if that pessimism proves warranted - and North Korea shows itself to be more interested in nuclear proliferation than in guaranteed security - continuation of Washington's good-faith effort will put it in an immensely stronger position internationally to deal with the threat.

Brent Scowcroft, president of the Forum for International Policy, was national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W.  Bush. Arnold Kanter, a senior fellow at the forum, was under secretary of state from 1991 to 1993.