"It's like a child going through a tantrum to attract attention, to basically say, you know, 'I need help.' And they do need help," said Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"Ultimately we need to engage them. I don't think we have done all we can to engage them, even if they misbehave. Dialogue is not a reward in my view. Dialogue is a way to change behaviour," he told a forum at Yale University.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that envoys from North Korea, the United States and China had met in Beijing and agreed to restart the talks on North Korea's nuclear programs.
Talks between the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia stalled last November with North Korea objecting to a US crackdown on companies it suspects of aiding the Communist state in counterfeiting and drug-running.
"I've said a number of times, we need to bite the bullet and talk to our adversaries, whether we like them or not" ElBaradei told the crowd of about 200 students and faculty.
"North Korea is a regime that rightly or wrongly feels terribly isolated. Lots of people are going hungry through this coming winter. Thirty-five percent of the children in North Korea are malnourished," ElBaradei said.
"And they have one trump card, which is the nuclear know-how. And unfortunately, they are using this trump card to maximise the concessions they would like to get from the international community.
"Let's put aside the morality or immorality of what they are doing. But this is the real situation, the situation that they're trying to blackmail, if you like," he said.
He repeated that North Korea's Oct. 9 nuclear test was both predictable and inexcusable.
"This was predictable to me because I saw North Korea feeling more and more isolated over the last few years. This is, of course, inexcusable because we do not want to add more nuclear countries to the list of what we have," he said.
He added that the world should do all it can to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but that he considered the Islamic republic a "virtual nuclear state" because it has the capability to enrich uranium.
He said "the jury is still out" on whether Tehran wants nuclear technology for peaceful purposes or to develop weapons. He said there was no indication Iran has the industrial capacity to manufacture nuclear arms.
He agreed with the assessment of US Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte that Iran would have the capability to develop nuclear weapons between 2010 and 2015. "That gives me comfort because that means that we still have enough time to dialogue, to negotiate," he said.

Copyright Reuters, 2006