U.S. to Withdraw From Arms Accord With North Korea

[Dr Yoon]

 

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October 20, 2002

U.S. to Withdraw From Arms Accord With North Korea

By DAVID E. SANGER

 

ASHINGTON, Oct. 19 — The Bush administration has decided to scrap the 1994 arms control accord with North Korea that has provided Western energy aid in return for the North's promise to freeze the development of nuclear weapons, senior administration officials said today.

North Korea admitted two weeks ago that it was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program, and accused the United States of taking steps that forced Pyongyang to nullify the accord. The White House has since debated whether to end the accord, with some aides warning such a step could lead North Korea to even greater nuclear violations.

For that reason, the administration plans to caution North Korea of serious consequences if it tries to remove nuclear material now stored under international supervision at Yongbyon, the reactor site that was the centerpiece of a previous nuclear standoff with North Korea in the early 1990's. American diplomats visiting Beijing apparently asked China this week to convey that warning, though it is not clear whether the message has yet been delivered to the North Koreans.

The immediate practical effect of the decision to scrap the agreement is the halting of the annual shipments of 500,000 tons of fuel oil from the United States to North Korea.

Even if the clandestine North Korean program effectively suspended the accord, the administration's decision to formally abandon it sends a clear message: it signifies an American effort to pose a stark choice for North Korea, between abandoning all of its nuclear weapons programs and facing near-total economic isolation.
"We think the framework as we knew it is dead," one senior administration official said when questioned about the administration's strategy. "The North Koreans already told us they viewed it as `nullified,' " the official added.

More immediately, abandoning the accord also means that the United States will urge its allies, Japan and South Korea, to suspend, if not end, a multibillion dollar project to provide modern nuclear power plants to the North. Ground has already been broken for proliferation-resistant reactors, designed to help North Korea provide basic electricity service to cities and towns that go dark every night, and to World War II-era factories that now barely operate. The reactors have not yet been delivered.

Other officials described a lengthy debate within the White House over the risks of abandoning the agreement altogether.

"There are some who fear that it could tempt the North Koreans into a rapid breakout, to produce weapons as fast as they can," one official involved in the debate said. But Mr. Bush, who came to office deeply suspicious of the usefulness of the accord, has concluded that the North Korean admission, made in defiant tones after the United States presented evidence of the breach, proves that the accord was fatally flawed all along, his aides say.

In 1994, President Clinton had contingency plans in place for a military strike at the Yongbyon plant if North Korea tried to make use of the reactor fuel for bombs, according to several of his former national security aides. The accord reached at the last minute that year, as American forces were being reinforced on the Korean Peninsula, defused that crisis. Since disclosing Wednesday night that North Korea has admitted to pursuing a new nuclear project, Mr. Bush's aides have played down any talk of a military response. North Korea acknowledged the program in defiant tones after the United States presented evidence that it had breached the accord.

Officials did not specify what consequences North Korea might face if it ignored American warnings, a sharp contrast to the approach being taken with Iraq. They argued again that the North, even if nuclear armed and unpredictable, does not pose as great a threat to the United States and its allies as does Saddam Hussein, who does not appear to have any nuclear weapons so far but is suspected of having chemical and biological arms.

Several years ago the Central Intelligence Agency estimated that North Korea already had reprocessed enough plutonium at Yongbyon to make one or 2 nuclear weapons, and that the fuel in storage could be fabricated into 5 or 10 more.

American officials say there is no indication so far that any of that material has been removed from the storage facilities, which the International Atomic Energy Agency monitors.

The 1994 accord was specifically designed to halt a sophisticated and well-advanced nuclear program at Yongbyon that involved extracting plutonium from reactor waste, and using it to produce weapons. But under other agreements, the North Koreans were also forbidden other new projects, including the one it now says it has been pursuing, using a more easily hidden technology to produce a bomb from highly enriched uranium.

Enforcing that isolation — the administration would not use the word "embargo" today, although that appears to be what it has in mind — would require the agreement and cooperation of China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and Europe. Already the administration is running into significant resistance — chiefly from South Korea, which has long argued for engagement with the North. South Korean officials fear that the enigmatic North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, will feel backed into a corner by any American-led effort at economic isolation.

"This is going to take some time, because a lot of countries have different equities with the North Koreans," said the senior official, describing a slow and deliberate diplomatic approach that contrasts with the short timetable for disarmament it has given to Iraq.

But South Korea wants to do everything it can to tamp down any sense of crisis, for fear that a repeat of the 1994 nuclear confrontation could veer out of control. The difference between the American and South Korean approaches was evident tonight when South Korea's unification minister — whose job it is to smooth relations with the North — arrived in Pyongyang, the capital, for an official visit.

The minister, Jeong Se Hyun, raised the nuclear problem in the most circumspect terms, and a pool report distributed in Seoul quoted Mr. Jeong as telling North Korea's prime minister that it was "of paramount importance to wisely resolve the concern recently raised."

Before leaving Seoul this morning, Mr. Jeong said he would ask the North Koreans "to resolve the nuclear issue" while going ahead with "the agreed-upon agenda for reconciliation and exchange" between the North and South.

The administration does not plan to publicly announce its decision to abandon the 1994 agreement anytime soon, officials say, in hopes of creating a unified front with its allies.

The spokesman for the National Security Council, Sean McCormack, said today, that "North Korea, by its own declaration, has said the agreed framework is `nullified' and their actions have made them noncompliant with the agreement."

Much of the technology for the new program came from Pakistan, according to current and former officials familiar with the intelligence. Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said on Friday that a news article in The New York Times describing the American intelligence finding was "absolutely baseless."

"There is no such thing as collaboration with North Korea in the nuclear arena," General Musharraf said.

The White House, in a carefully worded statement, said it hoped all nations would cut off any nuclear aid to North Korea, and neither confirmed nor disputed the Times account.

In Seoul today, James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, and the man to whom the North Koreans revealed their clandestine effort in a heated session two weeks ago, said the United States wanted to bring "maximum international pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions."

But he carefully avoided hinting that South Korea supported a tough stand vis-à-vis the North. Mr. Bush will meet South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, who is about to leave office, and Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, at a Pacific economic summit meeting in Mexico next weekend.

Mr. Kelly's stop in Seoul was a prelude to that meeting, and he moved on today to Tokyo in search of a unified response to the surprise North Korean announcement. He would say only that he and South Korean officials "discussed all aspects" of North Koreas nuclear program but had "reached no decisions" on what to do next.

Today, Mr. Kelly said that the North Koreans "did not make any demands" during his visit on Oct. 3 and 4, when the nuclear program was revealed, but he added that they "did suggest there were measures that might be taken" to induce them to comply with the American demand that they disarm and come back into compliance with their past agreements. North Korea has repeatedly accused the United States of delays in construction of the twin light water nuclear reactors.

"They indicated when all these good things were done, we might be able to talk about their covert enrichment program," Mr. Kelly said. "The North got it upside down."

The senior administration official interviewed about the White House's strategy said that North Korea must end the highly enriched uranium program "in a verifiable way," a major task in a country known for its skills at digging deep caves. The official added: "This time we must also address other problems — missile transfer, the conventional forces the North has, and the abominable way it treats its people." None of those issues were covered in the 1994 framework accord.

"You can't have re-entry into the international community of states and brandish a nuclear weapon," said the official.