Pyongyang's programme

Published : Nov 22, 2002 00:00 IST

The subdued response of the U.S. to the North Korean revelation that it had a clandestine nuclear weapons programme going, stands in contrast to Washington's rhetoric on the Iraq front.

THE revelation by the North Korean authorities that they had a major clandestine bomb-building programme, has moved international attention to the Korean peninsula. The acknowledgement to the Bush administration came at a time when the United States was trying to build a case against Iraq for allegedly hiding weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush administration has been busy trying to put the North Korean issue on the back burner, while it single-mindedly focusses on a non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programme. It has now been revealed that it took the Bush administration 12 days to announce to the world the North Korean revelation, in the meantime figuring out ways to minimise the crisis. According to Bush's new doctrine of pre-emption, the U.S. should strike against any state possessing weapons of mass destruction and having an authoritarian ruler.

Iraqi Vice-President Tariq Aziz has said that the Bush administration's failure even to threaten tough action against Pyongyang is yet another illustration of the fact that America's objectives in threatening Iraq are "oil and Israel" and not concerns about any weapons development programme. In fact, after the initial tough posturing by the Bush administration on North Korea, indications are that Washington will toe the moderate line adopted by Pyongyang's neighbours, namely China, South Korea and Japan. All of them have urged the North to dismantle its nuclear programme while cautioning the U.S. against imposing more draconian sanctions.

At a meeting on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Los Cabos, Mexico, in mid-October, U.S. President Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, called on the North to end its nuclear weapons programme. South Korea and Japan have been stressing the need to keep open channels of communication with the North. Koizumi, who was on a much-publicised visit to Pyongyang recently, the first ever by a Japanese Prime Minister, is not about to give up on the North. Japanese big business sees it as a potentially lucrative area for trade and investment.

However, Koizumi warned the North "that normalisation talks would not be concluded" unless the issue was resolved. Seoul has been much more dovish on the issue as President Kim does not want his "sunshine policy" towards the North to be imperilled even as he savours his last days in office. In an agreement reached in the last week of October in Pyongyang, the two Koreas said that they "would actively pursue dialogue" to resolve the nuclear issue. Significantly, the Bush administration has allowed a shipment of heavy fuel oil to the North to go ahead.

Following a meeting between Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, both sides agreed that the issue should be resolved through negotiations but stressed that the North should scrap its nuclear programme. Washington is giving Beijing considerable importance in its diplomatic efforts to defuse the Korean crisis. Beijing was the first capital that senior American officials visited after the crisis erupted.

Despite some differences, China remains close to the North and dispatches considerable amounts of humanitarian aid to the socialist country. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in late October that his country "consistently supports the de-nuclearisation" of the Korean peninsula. Recently, in order to allay fears expressed in Washington, the Chinese government tightened restrictions on the export of technologies that have the potential to contribute to the production of weapons of mass destruction.

Nevertheless, China does not want the North, which is suffering from a debilitating economic malaise, to collapse politically. If such a scenario unfolds, American troops will be on its borders. (Some 36,000 American troops are permanently stationed on the Korean peninsula.) After September 11, 2001, new American military bases have come up on China's periphery. Chinese officials seem to subscribe to the view that the North Korean leadership, by suddenly revealing its nuclear secrets, may actually be signalling that it wants more attention from Washington, including direct talks. President Kim has suggested that the North's admission could turn into a window of opportunity for diplomacy that could take the process of rapprochement to a higher level.

So far, China has not been openly critical about North Korea. But at the APEC summit, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said that North Korea and its nuclear programme posed no danger to the world. A senior U.S. State Department official also backtracked on earlier statements by suggesting that the 1994 agreement with North Korea was still valid. While admitting that it is pursuing a nuclear programme, Pyongyang said that it no longer recognised the 1994 treaty signed between the two countries. Senior Bush administration officials expressed similar views.

Pyongyang has since offered to renew talks with Washington while demanding that both countries sign a "non aggression" pact. A statement issued by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Foreign Ministry said: "If the U.S. legally assures the DPRK of non-aggression, including non-use of nuclear weapons against it, by concluding such a treaty, the DPRK will be ready to clear the former of its security concerns".

Pyongyang insists that it is entitled to possess any type of weapons "to defend its sovereignty and right to existence from the ever growing nuclear threat by the U.S." North Korea has indicated that it would not resume the dialogue process unless Washington recognises its sovereignty and lifts all economic sanctions. Pyongyang has also signalled that it would harden its posture in case work on the two nuclear reactors for civilian purposes built with South Korean and Japanese help is stopped as a result of the recent developments.

The Bush administration has not responded to the North Korean offer. The American position is that there will be no renewed negotiations with the North till such time that the newly revealed weapons programme is "verifiably dismantled". However, U.S. officials are not ruling out negotiations. They have pointed out that channels of communication between Washington and Pyongyang remain open at the United Nations.

North Korea had agreed formally to "freeze" its nuclear weapons programme after signing a landmark agreement with the U.S. in 1994. The Clinton administration had threatened to take strong economic and military measures against the North if it did not stop work on its indigenously built nuclear reactor. But the North claimed that the reactor was being built in order to generate power for the energy-starved nation, which was going through hard times after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. authorities, on the other hand, claimed that Pyongyang was diverting material from the reactor to a weapons development programme. Under the agreement, Pyongyang agreed to suspend the operation of nuclear reactors capable of producing weapons grade materiel and to place plutonium that had been produced under international safeguards.

The 1994 agreement was hailed as a breakthrough after Pyongyang agreed to give up its advanced nuclear weapons programme in lieu of promises of huge amounts of Western aid and the construction of two light water nuclear reactors with Japanese and South Korean money. The two reactors were meant to meet the chronic energy shortfall that the country was facing. But the work has been exceedingly slow and the much talked-about aid package from the West has turned out to be mostly a mirage.

The Bush administration, unlike its predecessor, was even less sympathetic to the economic and humanitarian catastrophe that the DPRK has been facing. In his State of the Union address early this year, Bush included North Korea along with Iraq and Iran in the so-called "axis of evil" group. Now, American officials allege that Pyongyang had been pursuing a parallel weapons development programme using a secret uranium enrichment facility. American intelligence officials say that clandestine help for the North's nuclear programme was being given by Islamabad. They say that from the early 1990s, Islamabad has been supplying North Korea gas centrifuges used to create weapons grade uranium as part of a barter deal under which Pyongyang supplied missiles to Pakistan. U.S. officials say that China and Russia too had a role to play in the North's nuclear programme.

According to U.S. officials, the clandestine trade between Islamabad and Pyongyang started in 1997 and continued after General Pervez Musharraf grabbed power two years later. Reports appearing in the U.S. media claim that front companies established by Abdul Qadir Khan, "the father of the Pakistani bomb", were responsible for the selling of nuclear gear and materiel to North Korea. American officials imply that the relationship continued after President Bush included North Korea in the "axis of evil" category.

The Indian government had sought an investigation into reports that Pakistan and North Korea clandestinely shared missile and nuclear technology. An Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson said: "Clandestine transfers and acquisitions of missile and nuclear technology involving Pakistan are a serious concern to us".

However, indications are that the Bush administration is trying to soft-pedal the whole issue as it does not want to divert its focus from its policy on Iraq. The Americans seem to be opting for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Many Americans ask why such a diplomatic solution is not possible on Iraq. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had long since certified that Iraq was free of nuclear weapons.

According to an observer, Washington's differing reactions to Iraq and North Korea shows the difference between dealing with a country which already may have nuclear weapons and one that does not. According to the head of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, Shin Kuhn, the North had built at least three crude nuclear weapons before Pyongyang shut its nuclear reactors in May 1992. Previous assessments by the South Korean and U.S. governments had put the number of North Korean nukes at two. Almost all the experts have agreed that the North was close to making a bomb when it signed the agreement with the Clinton administration in 1994.

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