High-stakes diplomacy is not unlike "Celebrity Poker." In both there is a big stage, a rapt audience and swift reversals of fortune. And in diplomacy as in poker, the best players can sense when their opponents are bluffing, wavering-or holding a winning hand. That certainly seemed to be the game that Wu Dawei, China's chief negotiator, was playing last week dur- ing the six-party talks in Beijing over North Korea's nuclear-arms program. For two years the Americans were thought to control most of the chips. The Chinese hosts often fretted about American intransigence-Washington's blunt willingness to walk away if it did not get what it wanted. But this time a subtle shift in psychology occurred at the table. When Wu presented a draft accord on Sept. 16-the fifth the Chinese team had painstak- "sequencing"-when the North might get a nuclear reactor-was far too vague.
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