|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
North Korea: U.S. Should Get Tough, Experts Say The United States needs to take a tougher approach with North Korea in regard to nuclear inspections, wrote Henry Sokolski and Victor Gilinsky in today’s National Review Online. North Korea’s recent decision to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit a nuclear research facility is a minor effort at best, according to Sokolski, the director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, and Gilinsky, an energy consultant and former U.S. nuclear regulatory commissioner. “Never mind that the facility is so benign and minor it does not require international nuclear inspections—or that Pyongyang is allowing it only to be ‘visited’ rather than examined,” they said. Sokolski and Gilinsky praised U.S. President George W. Bush for cracking down on the North on the issue of nuclear inspections. This is especially vital now, because the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) is preparing to start construction on two nuclear power plants in North Korea, they said. The North cannot get the essential nuclear equipment, however, until the IAEA can make sure North Korea is no longer attempting to build nuclear weapons. The inspection process is expected to take at least three years after full access is allowed to North Korea’s nuclear sites, according to the IAEA. “In other words, North Korea needs to open up to IAEA inspectors now to comply with the 1994 [nuclear power plant] deal,” the authors said. North Korea “will come into full compliance” with the IAEA when a “substantial portion” of the reactor deal is finished—the point the project is now expected to reach in three years. North Korea argues with this definition, saying instead that “substantial portion” is defined only as when they have to talk about inspections. “That doesn’t sound like the response of someone with nothing to hide,” Sokolski and Gilinsky wrote. North Korea’s refusal to comply with IAEA inspections also brings it into violation of the deal it signed with KEDO, which stated that all parties to the reactors’ construction must abide the inspection requirements in the 1994 deal. “KEDO’s way around this has been simply to ignore the requirement,” Sokolski and Gilinsky wrote, “and hope nobody notices.” “All this suggests the need for a tougher approach to securing North Korea’s compliance with its Nonproliferation Treaty requirements,” wrote Sokolski and Gilinsky. “What’s needed—and what President Bush is now calling for—is far more than what Pyongyang is offering” (Sokolski/Gilinsky, National Review, Dec. 10).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
