North Korea:  IAEA Inspectors Leave Country

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have left North Korea, Reuters reported today, and the United States is continuing diplomatic efforts to create a unified international front to isolate North Korea and pressure it into abandoning nuclear weapons efforts (see GSN, Dec. 30).

The two IAEA inspectors, one from China and the other from Lebanon, flew to Beijing after North Korean officials told them to leave Friday.  The two inspectors would not comment on their expulsion, according to Reuters.

“We have some job to do and we need to contact headquarters,” the Lebanese inspector said.

The inspectors are to present a report to the IAEA executive board Jan. 6, the agency said.  IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the agency regretted the inspectors’ expulsion and said they were ready to return if North Korea chose to let them do so.

“We regret that they left,” Fleming said.  “But we’ve kept an open office.  We’re storing our equipment there, leaving open the eventual possibility that our inspectors could return,” she added (Paul Eckert, Reuters, Dec. 31).

The withdraw of the IAEA inspectors will make it even more difficult to monitor North Korea for signs that it might be developing nuclear weapons, Fleming said.

“We were the eyes of the world,” she said.  “Now we virtually have no possibility to monitor North Korea’s nuclear activities nor to provide any assurances to the international community that they are not producing a nuclear weapon,” Fleming added.

The lack of inspectors within North Korea will force the IAEA to become more reliant on satellite imagery, Fleming said.

“It’s a position this agency does not like to be in,” she said.  “We need to be on the ground at the facilities directly, in order to be in a position to verify a given country’s nuclear declaration,” Fleming added (George Jahn, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 31).

International Diplomacy

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has decided that North Korea’s neighbors, especially China and Russia, must take on a larger role in resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, officials said yesterday.  The White House approach would allow U.S. officials to maintain a focus on the situation with Iraq and delay any direct talks with North Korea, while still pursuing a diplomatic solution, the Washington Post reported.

So far, Russia and Japan have been the most aggressive in relaying tough messages from the United States to North Korea, while China and South Korea have been less supportive of placing pressure themselves on Pyongyang, according to U.S. officials.  Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested a meeting of diplomats from the four countries, along with the United States and North Korea, in order to elevate the informal discussions, the Post reported.  

U.S. officials have supported the idea of such a meeting, as it would allow them to maintain a policy of no direct talks with North Korea, according to the Post.  Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, said yesterday that such a meeting “would be a face-saving way to sit down and talk to the North Koreans.”

China, however, has resisted the suggestion, saying that North Korea would not attend.

“The Chinese have come back and said, ‘you need to talk to them,’ which raises the question about whether they are carrying our water to Pyongyang or they are carrying Pyongyang’s water to us,” a U.S. official said (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Dec. 31).

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung has said U.S. attempts to pressure and isolate North Korea into abandoning its nuclear weapons efforts were guaranteed to fail and that his engagement policies were the only “effective” method.

“Pressuring and isolating communist countries have never been successful — Cuba is one example,” Kim said during a Cabinet meeting.  “But inducing such countries to open up through dialogue has always been successful,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Bangkok Post, Dec. 31).

South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun has also been openly critical of what U.S. officials have called a ‘tailored containment’ policy, saying yesterday that the United States needs to consult with South Korea before taking any action.

“I'm skeptical about the effectiveness of the reported ‘tailored containment’ policy of the United States as a means to rein in North Korea,” Roh said.

The United States should give a high priority to South Korean views before making any decision regarding the Korean Peninsula, Roh said. 

“If the United States makes and announces a unilateral decision, and South Korea follows it, it can’t be called real cooperation between the two countries,” he said.

Roh announced yesterday that he would present a plan next month to help resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.  The plan would include proposals for a summit with and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and exchange visits by South Korean and U.S. presidential envoys, Roh said (Korea Herald, Dec. 31).

Containment

In addition to South Korean officials, diplomats and experts are skeptical of the effectiveness of U.S attempts to further isolate North Korea, saying there is little left to withhold.

“Economically, there really isn’t that much else that we can do to pressure North Korea,” said Lee Chung-min, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul.

North Korea suffers from a shortage of fuel, which keeps power plants idle and forces factories to operate at only about 30 percent capacity, said Park Suhk-sam, a expert on North Korea at South Korea’s central bank.  The energy that is produced goes primarily to Pyongyang and weapons factories, recent visitors said.

North Korea is able to obtain about $580 million annually through the export of ballistic missiles and missile technologies to countries such as Yemen, Syria, Egypt and Iran, said Kim Tae-woo, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (see GSN, Dec. 16).  For any containment policy to be effective, this arms trade would need to be stopped, Kim said. 

Any attempts to economically isolate North Korea are likely to require U.N. Security Council support, Lee said.  Two of the council’s permanent members — Russia and China — are less likely to support such action, however, because of their economic ties to Pyongyang, according to the Washington Post.

Russia, which sells military equipment to North Korea, has been critical of the U.S. approach toward the nuclear issue.  “Attempts to isolate North Korea can only lead to a new escalation in tension,” Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said yesterday.

Experts have said China, which provides North Korea with food and fuel assistance, would also be less likely to support the U.S. policy for fear of destabilizing the Korean Peninsula.

“Of course, China will not support containment,” said Jin Linbuo, an Asian security expert at the China Institution of International Studies in Beijing.  “If North Korea is in turmoil, then lots of refugees will crowd into China.  Moreover, if North Korea collapses, then the Korean Peninsula would be wholly controlled by the United States and its coterie.  North Korea’s existence protects China from American military domination,” Jin said (Peter Goodman, Washington Post, Dec. 31).

Pakistan Denies Coffin Smuggling Incident

Pakistan has denied a recent Japanese newspaper report that said North Korea obtained nuclear equipment from Pakistan in 1998, smuggled in the coffin of the murdered wife of a North Korean diplomat, according to Channel NewsAsia.

“It is as ridiculous as it can get,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said.  “A coffin which has a dead body in it will hardly have any room to accommodate anything else in it.  And if it has to accommodate then it is not a coffin, then it is a large container or something like that and can’t be called a coffin.  So obviously it is a totally baseless report and we reject it outrightly,” Khan added (Channel NewsAsia, Dec. 31).

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Iran:  Still No Agreement on Returning Spent Nuclear Fuel to Russia

Tehran and Moscow, unexpectedly, did not sign an agreement last week on a plan to return spent fuel to Russia from an $800 million dollar reactor being built in Iran, according to Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev (see GSN, Dec. 16).

Rumyantsev was in Iran last week to finalize the spent fuel agreement, but the two sides never signed.

“A concrete agreement calls for a certain procedure,” Rumyantsev told reporters after returning to Moscow.  “During our stay in Iran the president of the state said that Iran was fully in favor of the idea.  Now an intergovernment agreement must be agreed between the ministries and agencies … we have already finalized the text of the addition and it is currently pending before the Foreign Ministry for approval.  It begins with the words that Russia undertakes to deliver and the Iranian side undertakes to return spent nuclear fuel and then spells out the procedure,” he added.

Rumyantsev said he hopes an agreement will be signed within a month (Federal News Service transcript, Dec. 27).

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Al-Qaeda:  Terrorist Group Sought Help From Pakistani Nuclear Scientist

Azim Mehmood, son of Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiru-din Mehmood, has said suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden approached his father to help al-Qaeda develop a nuclear weapon, but was refused, the Associated Press reported Sunday (see GSN, July 11).

“Basically Osama asked my father, ‘How can a nuclear bomb be made and can you help us make one?’” Mehmood said.  “My father said, ‘No, and secondly you must understand it is not child’s play for you to build a nuclear bomb,’” he added.

Pakistani intelligence officials have placed a gag order on the elder Mehmood.  The conversations between the scientist and al-Qaeda operatives, as described by his son, however, indicate that bin Laden had a desire to obtain nuclear weapons, according to AP.  In addition to a nuclear weapon, “al-Qaeda also wanted a person who could train their people, and who could get them enriched material for their weapons,” Azim Mehmood said.

Mehmood said his father did not know what, if any, nuclear materials al-Qaeda had obtained.

“At one meeting they brought a box, a thing that someone had sold to them for a huge amount of money, but my father laughed and said it was nothing,” he said.

Neither the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad nor U.S. officials in Washington would comment on Mehmood’s story, AP reported (Kathy Gannon, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 29).

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U.S. Testing:  NNSA Activates Lasers for Nuclear Simulations

Scientists at the U.S. National Ignition Facility at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory successfully activated four laser beams that will enable nuclear simulations and stockpile maintenance without underground testing, the National Nuclear Security Administration announced this month.

The high-power lasers, the first of 192 planned for the facility, will be used to apply extreme temperatures and pressures to small targets.  They were turned on more than a year ahead of schedule, according to an NNSA release.  On Dec. 18 scientists at Livermore used all four beams to produce a pulse that carried 43 kilojoules of infrared light and lasted five-billionths of a second.

“This important milestone marks the transition of the NIF from a construction project to an integrated light-producing facility,” said NNSA Acting Administrator Linton Brooks.  “It will help us model and simulate nuclear explosions to ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons stockpile without underground nuclear testing,” he added (National Nuclear Security Administration release, Dec. 19).

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India:  Officials Could Announce Formal Nuclear Command Soon

India will most likely announce its strategic force command — designed to handle nuclear and missile capabilities — early next year, The Hindu reported today (see GSN, Aug. 13).

Although a formal apparatus has not yet been announced, India might have an “informal” structure to handle such issues, according to outgoing chairman of the Indian Chiefs of Staff Committee, Army Gen. S. Padmanabhan.

“If it does not appear to be there, it does not mean it is not there.  What is invisible today will become visible tomorrow,” Padmanabhan said.  “These are certainly things not in the public domain.  We may have an informal structure already which in time could acquire a formal status,” he added.

Air Vice-Marshal T.M. Asthana could be named the head of the new command, The Hindu reported.

Padmanabhan also made reference to the idea that Pakistan’s nuclear capability prevented India from going to war earlier this year (see GSN, Dec. 30).

“We had evaluated it (the nuclear capability) and were ready to cope with it,” he said (Sandeep Dikshit, The Hindu, Dec. 31).

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North Korea:  IAEA Inspectors to Leave Yongbyon Tomorrow

International Atomic Energy Agency Inspectors are scheduled to leave North Korea tomorrow after the country demanded their departure in a letter Friday to IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei (International Atomic Energy Agency release, Dec. 28).  One of the three IAEA inspectors at the Yongbyon nuclear site left North Korea Saturday, the agency said (see GSN, Dec. 16).

ElBaradei said Saturday that he would submit a report today to the agency’s executive board outlining how North Korea has violated the 1994 Agreed Framework.  The board is then expected to consider how to respond during a meeting scheduled for Jan. 6 in Vienna, he said.  ElBaradei said that he would urge the board to demand that North Korea allow inspectors to resume monitoring the Yongbyon site.  If that failed, the IAEA would “have an obligation to refer the matter to the [U.N.] Security Council,” he added (Peter Goodman, Washington Post, Dec. 29).

The IAEA received North Korea’s request to remove its inspectors in a letter Friday, according to an agency press statement.  In his response, ElBaradei said the inspectors were needed to install monitoring equipment and to oversee the restarting of North Korea’s nuclear facilities.

“Together with the loss of cameras and seals, the departure of inspectors would practically bring to an end our ability to monitor D.P.R.K.’s nuclear program or assess its nature,” ElBaradei said.  “This is one further step away from diffusing the crisis,” he added (IAEA release, Dec. 27).

NPT

Meanwhile, North Korea today renewed its long-standing threat to withdraw completely from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  North Korea has claimed a “special status” in the treaty, which allows it to delay implementation of its IAEA safeguards agreement until the delivery of components for two light-water nuclear reactors, as called for under the Agreed Framework.

Considering recent events, however, “even our special status is now in peril,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a press statement (BBC Monitoring, Dec. 30).

Escalation

The withdrawal of the IAEA inspectors and North Korea’s threats to withdraw from the NPT are the latest in a recent series of escalating moves centered on Pyongyang’s decision to restart its nuclear program.  North Korea began moving new fuel rods into the 5-megawatt reactor located at Yongbyon last week, placing 2,000 into a storage facility at the site by Friday, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.  The reactor would need about 8,000 fuel rods for operation, she added (Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 27).

North Korea also last week removed IAEA seals and monitoring equipment at three facilities at Yongbyon — the 5-megawatt reactor and its associated spent-fuel storage pond, a fuel rod production plant and a spent fuel reprocessing facility, according to an IAEA press statement (IAEA release, Dec. 24). 

“The reprocessing plant is the important one, because that’s where they extract the plutonium from the spent fuel,” said IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky.  “If we don’t have our monitoring equipment in place, we’re not in a position to assure anybody that this material is not being diverted for weapons,” he added.

The storage pond contains about 8,000 spent fuel rods, the New York Times reported (Richard Stevenson, New York Times, Dec. 24).  The United States is concerned about the status of the spent fuel rods because of their potential use in developing nuclear weapons, U.S. State Department spokesman Louis Fintor said last week.

“The 8,000-odd spent fuel rods are of particular concern because they could be reprocessed to recover plutonium for nuclear weapons,” Fintor said.  “They have no relevance for the generation of electricity,” he added (Sanger/Dao, New York Times, Dec. 23).

U.S. Plans

The United States is attempting to begin informal communications with North Korea in order to resolve the nuclear issue and has no plans to conduct a military attack, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday. 

“We are looking for ways to communicate with the North Koreans so some sense can prevail,” Powell said on NBC’s Meet the Press.  There are “channels open” and “ways of communicating,” but the United States would not respond to North Korea’s moves by saying, “Let’s have a negotiation because we want to appease your misbehavior,” Powell added.

Powell said that James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, would travel to South Korea within the next two weeks.  There are no plans, however, for Kelly to meet with North Korean officials, Powell said.

The White House is also ending a Clinton administration policy calling for a military attack on North Korea if it resumed producing nuclear weapons, Powell said. 

“In fact, the Clinton administration did have a declaratory policy that if anything else happened at Yongbyon, they would attack it,” Powell said on ABC’s This Week.  “We don’t have that policy.  We don’t — we’re not saying what we might or might not do.  We think it’s best to try to use diplomacy,” he added.

The United States would take some sort of action, however, if it was determined that North Korea was transferring completed nuclear weapons to other countries, Powell said on Meet the Press.  “This, I think, would be a red line that would definitely be crossed,” he said (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, Dec. 30).

While the United States is seeking an informal dialogue with North Korea, plans are also being developed to increase political and economic pressure on Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons efforts, according to senior Bush administration officials.

The plan calls for North Korea’s neighbors, such as South Korea and China, to reduce their economic links to Pyongyang, according to the New York Times.  The U.N. Security Council could also threaten to implement economic sanctions and the United States might use military force to intercept missile shipments to deprive North Korea of needed income, the Times reported.

The threat of economic isolation is the best way to force North Korea to end its nuclear weapons efforts, or to ultimately bring down the Kim Jong Il regime, Bush administration officials said.  Under the plan, called “tailored containment,” the United States is willing to negotiate with North Korea, but only if it first gives up its weapons program, they said.

“It is called ‘tailored containment’ because this is an entirely different situation than Iraq or Iran,” a senior administration official said.  “It is a lot about putting political stress and putting economic stress.  It also requires maximum multinational cooperation,” the official added (Michael Gordon, New York Times, Dec. 29).

Economic pressure might be an effective tool against North Korea because Pyongyang’s economy is dangerously weak, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Economic reforms introduced in July have led to increased food prices and if effective sanctions were implemented, even senior North Korean Communist Party members would face difficulty getting food, diplomats, businessmen and defectors said.

North Korea’s large-scale economic problems and food shortages, however, could make it more difficult for the United States to persuade other countries to join an economic campaign, diplomats and analysts in Asia said.  For example, China and South Korea are both concerned about greater instability in the region, which could be caused by North Korea’s economic collapse, they said (Soloman/Cooper, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 30),

International Diplomacy

North Korea’s neighbors — South Korea, Japan, China and Russia — have begun planning their own diplomatic moves to help reduce tensions and resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, according to reports. 

Japan and Russia are expected to pledge to seek a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula in a plan to be adopted in a Jan. 10 meeting between the leaders of the two countries, Japanese government sources said.  Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is scheduled to begin a three-day visit to Moscow on Jan. 9 and to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin the following day to discuss North Korea, according to the Japan Times (Japan Times, Dec. 30).

South Korea said Sunday that it would send representatives to China and Russia — North Korea’s two main allies — “at the earliest possible date” in an effort to help convince North Korea to end its nuclear weapons efforts (The Straits Times, Dec. 29).

China said Saturday that it was still pursuing a diplomatic solution “to ease [the] tension” that had developed from North Korea’s decision to restart its nuclear program.  China still considers the Agreed Framework to be “conducive to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.  Both North Korea and the United States still have a responsibility to “abide by the agreement,” Liu said (P.S. Suryanarayana, The Hindu, Dec. 30).

Smuggling

Pakistan is suspected of having smuggled materials needed to construct a gas centrifuge, which is used to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons, to North Korea in 1998 in the coffin of the murdered wife of a North Korean diplomat, the Japanese newspaper Manichi Shimbun reported yesterday. 

Pakistan is believed to have placed a sample centrifuge, blueprints and other materials into the coffin.  North Korea then arranged a special fight from Islamabad to Pyongyang under the pretext of transporting the body, according to the Japanese newspaper (Takayuki Kasuga, Manichi Shimbun/BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Dec. 29).

For further information, see:

Agreed Framework Text

KEDO

NPT Text

States Parties to the NPT (U.N.)

U.N. Background on NPT

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Pakistan:  Musharraf Cautions India With Unconventional War

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said today that he warned India earlier this year that Pakistan was not afraid to use unconventional weapons if attacked (see GSN, April 8).

“In my meetings with various world leaders, I conveyed my personal message to Indian Prime Minister [Atal Behari] Vajpayee that the moment Indian forces cross the line of control and the international border, then they should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan,” Musharraf said.

Musharraf made his revelation at an army function today in Karachi, but he did not specifically mention Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

“I believe my message was effectively conveyed to Mr. Vajpayee,” he said (Agence France-Presse, Sydney Morning Herald, Dec. 31).

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Russia:  Converted ICBM Carries Satellites Into Space

Russia launched a converted SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile into space Dec. 20 carrying five satellites and a prototype of a Russian lunar-orbiting vehicle, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 27).  The Dnepr-1 rocket was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Dnepr is built as a joint venture between Russia and the Ukraine (Associated Press, Dec. 20).

The launch carried Italian, Argentine, Saudi Arabian and German satellites.  The first launch in the conversion program was in April 1999 and successfully carried a British satellite into orbit, Interfax reported this month.  The second, in September 2000, successfully placed Saudi Arabian, Italian and Malaysian satellites into orbit (Interfax, Dec. 10 in FBIS-SOV Dec. 10).

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