When President Bush declared North Korea part of an “axis of evil” that must be stopped from developing weapons of mass destruction, he did not mention one particularly complicated fact: The U.S. is helping North Korea build two nuclear reactors that one day could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
The deal, struck by the Clinton administration in 1994 to defuse a crisis over North Korea’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons, is now the focus of scrutiny among some Korea experts and critics in Congress.
They are calling on the administration to halt construction of the reactors, scheduled to begin this summer, until Pyongyang agrees to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to examine suspected caches of nuclear materials, something the North Koreans are resisting.
“Providing plutonium to [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il will give him more political and military power,” Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) said last week. “It’s going to make him even more dangerous.”
Letter to Bush
Cox joined Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.) in a letter to Bush this month urging the president to reconsider the agreement to provide the North with two nuclear reactors.
“We believe you should give further consideration with regard to whether it is in the U.S. national interest to allow North Korea to obtain access to light-water reactor designs or technologies in light of its ongoing interest in obtaining access to weapons of mass destruction,” the congressmen wrote.
The decision is a complex one for the administration because it could upset a delicate balance under which North Korea has maintained a freeze on its nuclear weapons development.
In the 1994 deal, North Korea consented to halt its refinement of weapons-grade plutonium and submit to international inspections of its nuclear capabilities. In return, Washington agreed to lead an international consortium in constructing two civilian nuclear reactors and to provide fuel oil for the Stalinist nation until those reactors could be brought on line.
Critics say the light-water reactors could produce enough material to make 50 bombs in the first 15 months of operation. Supporters of the agreement say the reactors would be operated under international supervision and say enough safeguards would be in place to prevent the North Koreans from attempting to produce weapons.
The North Koreans have lived up to part of the bargain: They have not resumed plutonium production, according to congressional testimony this month by George Tenet, the CIA director.
But they have not let the IAEA inspectors check plutonium stocks that U.S. officials suspect the North Koreans hid before the agreement took effect.
Because those inspections are painstaking and extensive, IAEA officials say they could take at least three years. This means the North Koreans must allow them to begin soon if they are to be completed before the most sensitive nuclear components are scheduled to be installed in the reactors in May 2005.
“We have a deal. We have an agreed framework. We’re prepared to carry through with it,” a senior Bush administration official said last week. “But right now, the North Koreans are not. The IAEA part of this is not accelerated to the point that we think it needs to be. We’re not going to do this if they’ve taken on the IAEA safeguards in some kind of half-baked way.”
Beyond the issue of nuclear proliferation, the Bush administration is alarmed by North Korea’s development and aggressive sales of longer-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that, despite the “axis of evil” label, the administration remains open to negotiations with North Korea on these and other issues. But the North Korean response has been chilled since Bush’s State of the Union speech.
Clinton aides defend deal
Former Clinton administration officials who were instrumental in negotiations with North Korea insist that the 1994 agreement should not be scrapped.
“The more you believe North Koreans are evil, the more you’d want to keep their production of plutonium frozen,” said Robert Einhorn, the former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation who led talks with North Korea.
The pact “has blocked North Korea from producing a very substantial amount of fissile material,” said Stephen Bosworth, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea.
The alternative, he said, would be for the U.S. to stop construction of the reactors–and the North Koreans to resume their aggressive production of bomb-grade plutonium.
But congressional critics of the arrangement have not been persuaded. They are championing legislation that would bar the United States from indemnifying any American firms that provide necessary technologies to complete the reactors.
Without indemnification, the firms would not participate because they would be left vulnerable to huge legal liabilities if the reactors malfunctioned.
