Fractious North Korea Nuclear Talks End With No Public Progress

Six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis ended Friday with a senior Chinese official blaming the lack of progress on the United States.  The talks were marked by North Korea announcing that it intends to test a nuclear weapon, according to reports (see GSN, Aug. 22).

“America’s policy toward the D.P.R.K. — that is the main problem we are facing,” said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Beijing’s chief delegate at the talks.  “We want [the] U.S. to make clear its position,” Wang said (Joseph Kahn, New York Times, Sept. 2).

North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il said Wednesday that North Korea intends to test a nuclear weapon, according to the Associated Press.  He also accused Japanese and Russian officials of lying at the behest of the United States (Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press/Washington Post, Aug. 28).

During the negotiations — which included China, Japan, Russia, the United States, North Korea and South Korea — Pyongyang reportedly offered to abandon it nuclear weapons production and open its facilities to inspectors in exchange for a U.S. nonaggression treaty, financial assistance and energy aid (Xinhua News Agency, Sept. 2).

During the talks, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly met informally with North Korean diplomat Kim, Reuters reported (Rhoads/Kitano, Reuters, Aug. 27).

Days before the meeting began, a top U.S. State Department expert on North Korea resigned.  Jack Pritchard, the U.S. special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, was recently criticized by Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz) for not delivering a hawkish message in his dealing with Pyongyang (Christopher Marquis, New York Times, Aug. 26).

The talks concluded Friday, and at that point Chinese officials said all the participating nations had agreed on the need for future meetings.  Within 24 hours, however, North Korea announced that it had no need for future talks (Kahn, New York Times).

Today, North Korea altered its approach and said it has “not yet changed our firm will to resolve the nuclear problem between the D.P.R.K. and the United States through dialogue” (Sang-hun Choe, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 2).

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IAEA Report on Iranian Nuclear Activities Bolsters U.S. Claims

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

In a report that could pose some tough choices for the White House, the U.N. nuclear inspection agency last week said it had found evidence that Iran might be closer to producing nuclear weapons than was previously thought (see GSN, Aug. 20).

The International Atomic Energy Agency said that environmental samples taken from the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz revealed traces of enriched uranium, which could be used to build a nuclear bomb (see GSN, July 18).  The Washington Post reported last week that U.N. officials suspect Pakistan of secretly helping Iran develop its nuclear facilities.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi last week confirmed the enriched uranium discovery, but denied that Iran had conducted any enrichment activity.

“The components that we have imported from outside [have] been contaminated,” he said (see GSN, Aug. 18).

President Bush said in June that the international community “will not tolerate the construction of a nuclear weapon” by Tehran.  The question is, how will Bush back up his rhetoric if the IAEA concludes that Iran has indeed violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty?

In June, the IAEA released an initial report that documented several new nuclear research facilities in Iran and raised questions about whether Iran’s nuclear efforts are designed purely for the peaceful production of energy, as Tehran asserts.  The new report will be formally presented next week to the IAEA’s Board of Governors, which is then expected to decide whether Iran’s growing nuclear program is in violation of the nonproliferation treaty.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and other inspectors have traveled to Iran in recent months, and ElBaradei has said he will be “in a much better position to make a judgment” about Iran’s nuclear ambitions by next week.

“I think they’ve come across some pretty damning evidence,” James Phillips, an Iran expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said earlier this month after rumors of the enriched uranium surfaced.  If the IAEA concludes that Iran is in violation of the treaty, the Bush administration will have to consider its options, including the use of force.  “It is a tough decision to consider military action,” Phillips said.  “It has to be considered — perhaps not publicly, but I’m sure it’s being considered privately.”

The United States has invaded both of Iran’s neighbors in the past two years, and Tehran must know that Bush’s strong words are not to be taken lightly.  In his July press conference, the president stressed that “all options remain on the table” in regard to Iran.  But he said he preferred a multilateral approach for convincing the Iranians that “the development of a nuclear weapon is not in their interests.”  Bush concluded by saying, “I really believe that we can solve this issue peacefully.”

Most experts dismiss the idea of a U.S. invasion of Iran; the country is larger than Alaska and has a population of 70 million, three times the size of Iraq’s.  But a strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear activities is a possibility.  Iran’s military — hopelessly overmatched — would probably not retaliate against U.S. forces, according to experts.

U.S. intelligence agencies, however, do not yet know enough about Iran’s nuclear facilities to make such a strike effective, according to Corey Hinderstein, a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.  Hinderstein said she would be “very surprised” if Bush allowed a strike without a comprehensive knowledge of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.  And that may take some time to acquire.

Although U.S. officials do not know the location of every Iranian nuclear facility, they have developed a picture of a broad and multipronged nuclear effort, including Iran’s efforts to mine and enrich uranium.

Confusing the situation further, Iran has also built a plant to produce heavy water, which can be used to allow unenriched uranium to fuel a nuclear reactor.  The plutonium byproduct from a heavy-water reactor can be reprocessed for use in a nuclear weapon.

Currently, the European Union and the United Nations are urging Iran to sign the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, allowing inspectors to conduct more intrusive monitoring of the country’s nuclear activities.  Tehran has so far resisted, but the concerted international pressure has forced Iranian officials to at least consider the pact.

That is good news, but only half the story, according to Amin Tarzi, a longtime Iran analyst who now works with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.  “The bad news,” he said, “is that if Iran really wants to make nuclear weapons, signing the Additional Protocol does not mean much.”

According to experts, Iran can continue to develop dual-use nuclear technologies that can be used for peaceful or bomb-making purposes, yet still be in compliance with the treaty.  And “if they decide to pursue a weapons capability, they would be able to do so very quickly,” Hinderstein said.

Iran could be stalling on the Additional Protocol simply as a way to keep U.N. inspectors at bay.  “They are basically buying time,” Tarzi said.  “They may actually sign the Additional Protocol.  They will do their bargaining — I always call it the carpet-bazaar mentality.  They will bargain and bargain and bargain.”

Phillips said the debate over the Additional Protocol is merely an attempt to “forestall concerted international pressure.  I think they’re fully committed to obtaining a weapon.”

Although experts agree that Iran might be playing a political game while building a nuclear arsenal, they also agree that Washington has no clear path to prevent that outcome.  Said Hinderstein, “I don’t think the United States, frankly, has a lot of options.”

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New Indian Nuclear Command Holds First Meeting

The Indian Nuclear Command Authority held its first meeting yesterday to make decisions to “consolidate India’s nuclear deterrence,” a New Delhi statement said (see GSN, Jan. 6).

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee led the meeting of the authority, which was created in January as part of India’s efforts to formalize its nuclear command and control structure.  During the meeting, a number of decisions were made to “further development and management of the [nuclear] program, the statement said (Agence France-Presse, Sept. 1).

A number of topics related to India’s nuclear arsenal were discussed during yesterday’s meeting, including alternate chains of command for retaliatory nuclear attacks, the transfer of nuclear delivery systems to the Strategic Forces Command and the development of a nuclear triad, sources said (Rajat Pandit, Times of India, Sept. 2).

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CTBT Entry Into Force Conference Begins Tomorrow

The 2003 Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty is scheduled to begin tomorrow in Vienna, according to a CTBT Organization release (see GSN, Aug. 13).

The conference, scheduled to be held through Friday, is expected to “renew global awareness of the treaty and encourage states who have not already done so to sign or ratify it,” the organization said.  Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja is expected to be chosen as conference president, according to the release.  The conference is also expected to receive a progress report by Mexico on cooperation among countries to facilitate the treaty’s entry into force as well as discussions between treaty signatories and ratifiers.

Article XIV of the treaty allows parties to convene a formal conference on ways to help the treaty take effect.  To date, 168 countries have signed the CTBT and 104 have ratified it, but 44 specific countries are required to ratify the pact before it can enter into force and only 32 have done so.  This week’s conference is the third conference to be held since the treaty was opened for signature in 1996 (see GSN, Nov.14, 2001; CTBT Organization release, Aug. 29).

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U.S. Plant Preparing to Produce Replacement Warhead Components

The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is preparing to begin production of replacement components for W-76 nuclear warheads deployed on Trident missile systems, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 11).

The W-76 warhead life-extension program is expected to begin in about a year, with the first delivery of components set for 2007, plant general manager Dennis Ruddy said.  Y-12 is now developing processes and reactivating systems used when the warheads were originally produced, AP reported. 

The number of warheads that will be replaced in the U.S. arsenal has not yet been determined, officials said. 

Several decisions remain to be made on the life-extension programs, such as which components of the warhead to reuse, Ruddy said.

“One of the desires is to have the capability to remake parts, but to the extent that we can to harvest them out of weapons as they’re recycled,” Ruddy said.  “It’s like taking good tires off an old car and putting them on the new one,” he said (Associated Press, Sept. 1).

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