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We now face a different kind of threat, a threat that is more diffuse and perhaps even more dangerous. The range and intensity of current nuclear proliferation challenges is alarming. The international community failed to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. We are now engaged in diplomatic efforts to roll back this development. Iran continues to ignore resolutions from the United Nations Security Council demanding that it suspend its enrichment activities and live up to those international obligations.

The International Atomic Energy Agency doesn't have the tools or authority to carry out its mission effectively. We saw this in the institution's failure to detect Iran's covert enrichment plant and Syria's reactor project. Illicit state and non-state proliferation networks are engaging in sensitive nuclear trade and circumventing laws designed to protect us against the export and import of nuclear materials.

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Thwarting the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran is critical to shoring up the nonproliferation regime. Within the framework of the six-party talks, we are prepared to meet bilaterally with North Korea, but North Korea's return to the negotiating table is not enough. Current sanctions will not be relaxed until Pyongyang takes verifiable, irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization. Its leaders should be under no illusion that the United States will ever have normal, sanctions-free relations with a nuclear armed North Korea.

Together with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, the United States is pursuing a dual-track approach toward Iran. If Iran is serious about taking practical steps to address the international community's deep concerns about its nuclear program, we will continue to engage both multilaterally and bilaterally to discuss the full range of issues that have divided Iran and the United States for too long. The door is open to a better future for Iran, but the process of engagement cannot be open-ended. We are not prepared to talk just for the sake of talking.

As President Obama noted after the October 1st meeting in Geneva, we appear to have made a constructive beginning, but that needs to be followed up by constructive actions. In particular, prompt action is needed on implementing the plan to use Iran's own low-enriched uranium to refuel the Tehran research reactor, which is used to produce medical isotopes.

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