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Experts Propose U.S.-Led Cooperative Threat Reduction Program for North Korea Nuclear Standoff
The United States should use programs it has used to contain the former Soviet Union’s WMD arsenal in efforts to end the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program, a group of experts said in a report released Friday (see GSN, Dec. 16). “With better relations between Washington and Pyongyang, North Korea may be open to dismantling parts or even all of its WMD program in return for tangible political, economic and security benefits that might be provided through a program like cooperative threat reduction,” says the report, released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think (the programs) are absolutely applicable” to North Korea, said Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the center, former State Department North Korea expert and report co-author. The authors said the United States should take the lead in establishing such programs to encompass all of Pyongyang’s WMD arsenals, with support from Russia, China, South Korea, the European Union and others, Agence France-Presse reported. “Elimination of these threats will require a series of diplomatic agreements, perhaps stretching out over the next decade at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars,” the report says. The experts called for “far-reaching proposals” that would show “a long-term commitment on the part of the United States not only to implementation of any Beijing agreement but also to helping Pyongyang redirect important resources that may bolster its economic development” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 17). Meanwhile, North Korea today responded to U.N. and U.S. criticism of its human rights record by threatening to boost its “nuclear deterrent,” the Associated Press reported. “If the United States strengthens its hostile policy aimed at stifling us under the pretext of human rights and the nuclear issues, we will respond by further solidifying our self-defense force including nuclear deterrent,” the Foreign Ministry announced in a statement (Associated Press, Dec. 19). Elsewhere, South Korea’s top nuclear negotiator, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, is in Washington for talks, the Yonhap News Agency reported yesterday. Chung departed for Washington two days after the end of bilateral negotiations with North Korean officials and is expected to discuss the nuclear crisis with top State Department officials, according to Yonhap (Yonhap, Dec. 18).
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