Aesop takes center stage in Nork talks

Reuters/NY Times:

North Korea and the United States have managed to agree on something in tortuous talks on the state's nuclear weapons program -- Aesop's fable about counting chickens before they hatch is right on the money.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice started the ball rolling on Thursday. ``I am, as I said, cautiously optimistic but I don't count my chickens until they are hatched,'' she told lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Then U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill and North Korean delegate Kim Kye-gwan echoed Rice as they met the press after discussions in Beijing on Friday.

``There are still differences on a series of issues in the overall talks, so we will try to work them out,'' Kim said. ``You should not try to count the chickens before they hatch, as somebody said.''

And from Hill... ``I think we can be cautiously optimistic but I don't want to count our chickens before they hatch.''

...

At least we are all in agreement on that. Whether more substantive agreements can be hatched is another question.