The United States today began a diplomatic campaign in Asia to devise solutions to the crisis launched by North Korea’s recent acknowledgement of its uranium enrichment program (see GSN, Oct. 17)

Two senior U.S. State Department officials arrived yesterday in Beijing for talks on North Korea — Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly.  Over the next 10 days, Bolton is scheduled to travel to the United Kingdom, France and Russia.  Kelly, who led the U.S. delegation to Pyongyang in early October when North Korea revealed the existence of its weapons program (see GSN, Oct. 7), is scheduled to travel to Japan and South Korea (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 18).

The White House yesterday said that it wanted to use diplomacy to head off any crisis.  “The president believes this is troubling, sobering news,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.  “We are seeking a peaceful resolution.  This is best addressed through diplomatic channels at this point.”

U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said diplomatic efforts could lead to a solution.  “International pressure may have an effect,” Rice said during an interview with ABC’s Nightline (Slevin/Kessler, Washington Post, Oct. 18).

“I think we’re going to see that no one wants to have a nuclear-armed North Korea,” she said (George Gedda, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Oct. 18).

The White House decided more than a week ago to take a diplomatic approach toward North Korea’s claims, a senior official said.  Even though the administration briefed members of Congress on the information over the past week, they did not make it public while Congress debated a resolution authorizing military force against Iraq.

“We were waiting for it to leak,” one official said. “But nobody was paying attention because of Iraq” (Slevin/Kessler, Washington Post).

“The timing of this thing is terrible,” a U.S. official said (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 18).

Members of Congress yesterday urged a re-evaluation of U.S. policies toward North Korea, according to the Washington Post.  While some lawmakers called for condemnation of North Korea, other suggested negotiations, the Post reported.

The United States should end all economic aid to North Korea — except for humanitarian assistance — and attempt to halt international lending institutions from providing aid, Representatives Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) said in a press statement.  Also, the U.N. Security Council should condemn North Korea, they said (Slevin/Kessler, Washington Post).

The World Food Program will probably continue to provide aid to North Korea as many officials oppose using food as a weapon, according to the Associated Press.

Some analysts and several lawmakers urged the White House to end the 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea agreed to end its nuclear program in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors (see GSN, Sept. 13; Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press, Oct. 18).

If North Korea and the United States cannot resolve the weapons program issue, then the construction of the light-water reactors will probably be stopped, said an official with the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, which oversees the construction project.  The project, which began pouring concrete in August, is currently about 25 percent completed, the Korea Herald reported (see GSN, Aug. 8; Seo Hyun-jin, Korea Herald, Oct. 18). 

“I think certainly that Congress and the taxpayers would want us to stop sending fuel oil to the North Korea military at taxpayers’ expense,” said Fred Ikle of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Jelinek, Associated Press).

“I can guarantee you there won’t be another dime for fuel oil.  Can you imagine taking the Agreed Framework back to Capitol Hill for funding?” a senior official said.  North Korea “lied to us.  They treated us with contempt.  What kind of a deal are you going to cut with a country like that?” (Slevin/Kessler, Washington Post).

North Korean Motivation

Experts have speculated on a wide number of reasons for North Korea choosing to reveal the existence of its nuclear weapons program in the time and manner that it did.  Some experts have said North Korea could have been motivated by fears of the Bush administration choosing to pursue a conflict after it is finished with Iraq (see GSN, Oct. 8).

“Don’t disregard North Korea’s paranoia and its fear of a U.S. attack,” said Gordon Flake, a North Korea expert and head of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs in Washington.  “The more the U.S. displays its capacity to and willingness to extend its reach — and what some people see as violate the sovereignty of other countries — the more frightened North Korea becomes.”

“The message is ... we have powerful weapons, more powerful than Iraq, and if you’re thinking about coming after us for your next target after Iraq, you better think twice, because we can hit back harder than the Iraqis can,” said Larry Niksch, an Asia specialist with the Congressional Research Service.

North Korea might have been trying to inform the United States about its nuclear weapons program in an attempt, albeit a clumsy one, to improve relations, according to other experts.  Some analysts interpreted the North Korean revelation as the first step of a bargaining process.

“At a minimum, he’s trying to put North Korea back on the U.S. radar screen,” said Robert Einhorn, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.  “The Bush administration has not placed North Korea at the center of its universe, and I think North Korea would like to get (its) attention.”

“It probably signals that the North Koreans are willing to bargain over this program,” Einhorn said. “Whether the Bush administration is prepared to bargain is another story.”

North Korea’s apparent strategy to build up its military might against the United States while at the same time trying to improve relations with other Asian nations, such as Japan, might make more sense than first believed, some experts said.

“If they’re like us, they have a foreign ministry that wants to have better relations and they have a defense ministry that wants to have better weapons,” said Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington.  “They’re about as rational as we are” (Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 18).

Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, indicated North Korea saw the meeting with Kelly as part of a bargaining process.

“Their version of what happened in Pyongyang is they said to Mr. Kelly, look, we are willing to negotiate and end to our nuclear program and we’re willing to let you have the kind of inspections you want to verify that it’s OK, but you have to do two things:  First, you have to pledge that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against North Korea.  And, second, you have to fulfill your commitment to the normalization of relations including economic relations, which means aid,” Harrison said during an interview with PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

North Korea also does not believe the United States has lived up to its obligations under the Agreed Framework, Harrison said.  Language in the framework calls for the United States to provide formal assurances that it will not use nuclear weapons against North Korea, which has not been done, he said.

“Now comes the Bush administration on Sept. 20 with a new national security doctrine in which we explicitly say that we reserve the right to take pre-emptive military action against countries we consider a potential threat to the peace, which of course to them means North Korea is included,” Harrison said (Ray Suarez, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Oct. 17).

Sources of Enrichment Technology

The first signs of North Korea’s continued interest in developing nuclear weapons were detected in 1997, U.S. intelligence officials said.  Intelligence agencies discovered the construction of a large underground chamber at Kumchangni, a site north of Pyongyang, which was suspected to be intended to house a plutonium production reactor, according to the Washington Times.

In 1999, the U.S. Energy Department said it had discovered that North Korea had shifted the focus of its weapons program from producing plutonium to enriching uranium, the Times reported (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, Oct. 18). 

One way the United States learned that North Korea was attempting to develop a uranium enrichment program was by the discovery that Pyongyang was attempting to obtain large amounts of high-strength aluminum, which is used in uranium-enrichment equipment, weapons experts and officials said yesterday.

North Korea’s attempts to obtain the aluminum led U.S. analysts to conclude it was building a uranium-enrichment facility.

The aluminum would have been used to construct gas-centrifuge facilities — one method of producing enriched uranium, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Oct. 7). 

The centrifuge facilities “are not all that large, and conceivably you can build them above ground without being detected,” said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nonproliferation Project.  “There’s nothing unique about them from the outside.  And unlike nuclear reactors, they don’t have large heat signatures.”

“Centrifuges are hard to build, and North Korea could not have done it without outside help,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

U.S. intelligence officials also received information on significant construction activity believed related to a uranium enrichment facility, sources said. Past speculation on the location of such a facility has focused on three sites, including a suspected underground facility, called Hagap, located in the Changang province, said Daniel Pinkston, a senior researcher at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, Oct. 18).

Leading Suspect Is Pakistan

U.S. intelligence officials believe Pakistan was a major supplier of equipment for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, current and former senior U.S. officials said yesterday.

The equipment, which might have included gas centrifuges, was suspected of being part of an arrangement between Pakistan and North Korea that began in the late 1990s, in which North Korea agreed to provide ballistic missiles to Pakistan, the officials said.

“What you have here is a perfect meeting of interests — the North had what the Pakistanis needed, and the Pakistanis had a way for [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il to restart a nuclear program we had stopped,” said an official familiar with the intelligence.

In 1998, Pakistan tested its version of a North Korean-designed Nodong missile.  Former Clinton administration officials said they did not know how Pakistan could afford to purchase the North Korean missiles, however, since it was destitute at the time.

The CIA suspected that Pakistan had agreed to provide nuclear weapons technology to North Korea in exchange for the missiles, according to the New York Times.  Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program uses highly enriched uranium.  North Korea was interested in such technology because uranium enrichment can be conducted underground, undetected by U.S. satellites, officials said.

A Pakistani Embassy spokesman denied the allegations, saying it was “absolutely incorrect” to accuse Pakistan of aiding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

“We have never had an accident or leak or any export of fissile material or nuclear technology or knowledge,” the spokesman said (Sanger/Dao, New York Times, Oct. 18).

Asian Reactions

South Korea and Japan today called for continued contacts with North Korea, even after its admission of its nuclear weapons program.

“We regard (the admission) as a sign North Korea is willing to resolve this problem through dialogue,” said Yim Sung-joon, national security adviser to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. 

Kim is expected to discuss North Korea’s weapons program with Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at a joint summit scheduled for next week in Mexico, according to the Washington Post.

Japan also said it would continue its contacts with North Korea, which are meant to help establish formal relations between the two countries, according to the Post (see GSN, Sept. 17).  Japan said it would pressure North Korea to abide by the Agreed Framework (Goodman/Pomfret, Washington Post, Oct. 18).

North Korea’s admission, however, could damage its developing relations with Japan, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars of possible aid, according to the New York Times.

“We cannot start giving economic assistance as long as they keep up with this kind of violation,” said Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima.  “If your neighbor has nuclear weapons, or if your neighbor seriously tries to get nuclear weapons, how can you live with them?  You cannot give any assistance to them.  They have to stop doing that” (James Brooke, New York Times, Oct. 18).

The United States will probably try to force South Korea and Japan to slow down, or even stop, their attempts at building relations with North Korea, South Korean analysts said.

“The Americans can now demonstrate to the South Koreans and the Japanese that these guys are cheating, so there may be a push for a harder line toward Pyongyang,” said Taik Young-hamm, a professor at Kyungnam University's Graduate School of North Korean Studies.

China is likely to be “neutral on the surface,” but will work through informal channels to persuade North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program, said a senior Chinese scholar with close ties to the Chinese government.  “It would be incredible for us to just look on and do nothing,” the scholar said (Goodman/Pomfret, Washington Post).

IAEA Reaction

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, today told North Korea that the IAEA was willing to discuss reports of an undeclared uranium enrichment facility (see GSN, June 25).  The agency also wants to discuss with North Korea the general implementation of IAEA safeguards, ElBaradei said.

“The director general expressed the hope that the DPRK [North Korea] will without delay come back into full compliance with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations,” the IAEA said in a press release (International Atomic Energy Agency release, Oct. 18).

For further information, see:

Agreed Framework Text

KEDO

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