Washington ? U.S. negotiators holding talks with the North Koreans this week have reason to be wary of that nation’s flair for diplomatic drama.

Decades ago, North Korean officials once sawed the legs of chairs at the bargaining table, so their U.S. negotiating partners would look smaller. More recently, they tried shrinking their own team — one member a day — to unsettle the Americans.

“They have an incredible ability to sort of wait you out, and they can be very stubborn,” said Wendy Sherman, President Clinton’s adviser on North Korea who has been at the negotiation table in Pyongyang more than once. “In that sense they’re tough negotiators.”

The United States and North Korea have plodded through decades of mistrust and miscommunication, dating to armistice talks at the end of the Korean War.

The three days of discussions, beginning today in Beijing, to talk about North Korean’s suspected nuclear weapons program mark the first time in six months that the two sides have met face to face.

President Bush has taken a hardline approach to North Korea, calling it part of an “axis of evil” with Iran and prewar Iraq. The North Koreans are tough talkers, too.

In May 1999, a North Korean military leader launched talks in Pyongyang by verbally attacking former Defense Secretary William Perry, first by calling him the enemy and then threatening to attack the California city where Perry lives, said Sherman, who was there.

The North Korean said if the United States didn’t agree with North Korean demands, “he would bring a sea of fire to Palo Alto, Calif.,” said Sherman. She also went with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on her groundbreaking trip to North Korea in 2000.

The North Koreans historically have taken threats and brinkmanship tactics to the limit, said Scott Snyder, an expert on the nation’s negotiating style.

During talks in the 1950s, the North Koreans engaged in gamesmanship over protocol — fiddling over everything from the size of the flags placed on the table to the types of chairs used to seat negotiators.

“The North Koreans came in and cut the legs of the chairs down so that they would be taller than their (American) counterparts,” said Snyder, now an Asia specialist at the Asia Foundation in Seoul.

But sometimes when negotiations appear deadlocked, the North Koreans surprise the Americans, he said.

During one round of talks in the 1990s, Americans were puzzled when the North Korean delegation started shrinking.

“Every day, there would be one less person on the North Korean side,” Snyder said. “The U.S. side was beginning to wonder whether there would be anybody left to talk to.”

North Korea’s message was: “We really hate this,” but in the end, they made an agreement.

During talks in 1994, a North Korean negotiator repeatedly screamed at Robert Gallucci, the lead U.S. negotiator, to stop using the phrase North-South dialogue. “Enough with this!” the North Korean exclaimed.

Gallucci then rattled off the phrase a half dozen times merely to irritate his negotiating partner.

The North Koreans threatened to walk out, but there was one hitch — the meeting was taking place in their offices in Geneva.