All sides to the talks here between North Korea, South Korea and the United States agree: The most significant achievement was that the talks were held at all.

Beyond that, however, diplomats and experts differ over how significant Wednesday’s talks in New York were in ending the tense standoff that has remained in place since the 1950-53 Korean War.

“The process is continuing, but typically, progress is very slow and I wouldn’t expect any immediate results,” says Leonard Spector, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, a Washington-based think tank. “Historically, North Korea takes a step forward, half a step back, and a step sideways” in its diplomacy, he said.

But some participants are upbeat that, for the first time, North and South Korean officials are meeting on their own terms, albeit with a heavy U.S. presence around them.

“I do think all three delegations came into this with remarkably similar attitudes of seriousness of purpose,” said a senior U.S. State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “All three delegations are perfectly aware of the historic opportunity that we have.”

The atmosphere during six hours of talks led by North Korean Vice-Minister Kim Gye Gwon, South Korean Deputy Minister Song Yong Shik and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charles Kartman was cordial, all sides acknowledged. U.S. officials noted the absence of the traditional invective between the U.S.-backed Seoul regime and the Chinese-allied Pyongyang regime.

But despite the lack of the sort of aggressive rhetoric that has clung to the Korea dispute, the talks did not even end with an agreement on a proposed four-nation conference in the future, which would also include China. If the four-way meeting earned approval from all sides, it can become the basis to discuss ways to replace the 1953 armistice with a fresh peace accord.

“We need further study of the proposal,” Kim said after the talks.

“Since I have complete faith in the worthiness of our proposal, I believe that the North Koreans will immediately perceive that in Pyongyang and that they will accept it,” the U.S. official said.

But he added that he did not expect a response from Pyongyang over the next few days, although North Korean and U.S. officials are holding bilateral talks on matters including the idea of finally setting up liaison offices in each country.

Those talks, says Selig Harrison, an analyst of Korean affairs at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Centre for Scholars, could actually be more important than the ones staged Wednesday. The tripartite meeting, Harrison told IPS, was valuable primarily because “the United States had to be able to say that the North and South were meeting.”

With the obligatory meeting of the two wary factions out of the way, he added, Pyongyang and Washington can now move to the task of sorting out several major concerns each has had since North Korea first decided in 1994 to freeze its nuclear programme.

That agreement, heralded as a major advance in thawing the two nation’s Cold War-era dispute, obliged the two sides to move ahead in normalising economic relations, including the dropping of U.S. trade sanctions. But the United States still prohibits trade with Communist North Korea, Harrison said.

The Pyongyang government also has other pressing concerns at a time of drastic food shortages, he added: “Is there really going to be more food coming from outside nations? …Will U.S. commercial planes be able to pay for the use of North Korean airspace if they fly over it? Under current U.S. sanctions, they cannot.”

Spector said that Washington has already indicated that grain sales may move forward — a crucial need for the North, which has appealed to the World Food Programme for food assistance following several years of bad harvests and severe flooding. The United States has also put up 10 million dollars in relief aid for Pyongyang.

Perhaps most significantly, U.S. officials Wednesday announced that the Pentagon planned to suspend its traditional yearly military exercises conducted with South Korean troops. Pyongyang has seen the exercises as a provocation, and has warned that it could be prompted to retaliate militarily.

For its part, Spector noted, North Korea has sent out its own signals that it is more willing to try diplomacy with its Cold War nemeses. Pyongyang apologised in January for a shadowy incident last December when a North Korean submarine ran aground in the South, and several North Korean soldiers were killed in gun battles with Southern troops.

The Northern government also has backed down from its initial umbrage at the defection of a senior political official, Hwang Jang Yop, who developed its nationalist ‘juche’ (self-reliance) philosophy but is now critical of the government headed by Kim Jong-il.

“Both sides are trying to demonstrate that they want negotiations,” Spector said. Whether that portends a long-lasting thaw, or merely another phase in an up-and-down relationship, may take several more months to determine, he added.