It Makes a Difference to the Sheep

JAMES KELLY ON DPRK NUKES. A must read if only for its succinct summation of the Bush Administration's position on the issue. Snippets:

In the summer of 2002, however, the United States discovered that North Korea had not kept its part of the bargain. We learned conclusively that it was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program based not on plutonium but on uranium enrichment. This was a clear violation of North Korea’s obligations to South Korea under the Joint Denuclearization Declaration of 1992 and to the international community under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the D.P.R.K.’s Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It was also a fundamental breach of the U.S.-D.P.R.K. Agreed Framework, which aimed to “achieve peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.” By the way, our negotiator of the Agreed Framework, Ambassador Robert Gallucci, left the North Koreans in no doubt that any uranium enrichment program would break the Agreed Framework. As he testified to Congress in December, 1994, the Agreed Framework requires the D.P.R.K. to implement the North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which precludes any reprocessing or enrichment capability. “If there were ever any move to enrich,” Ambassador Gallucci told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “we would argue they were not in compliance with the Agreed Framework.”

This is clearly a salvo aimed at those who argue that 1) The Bush team either fabricated the charges about a HEU program or misunderstood what North Korea said about such a program and 2) That even if the DPRK does have an HEU program, it is not, technically in violation of the Agreed Framework.

Of course in the post-Iraq era, one has to be quite skeptical about claims based on American intelligence. Kelly elaborates:

Let me digress here briefly to address the issue of the North Koreans’ acknowledgement to me of their uranium enrichment program, because they later began to deny that they had done so, causing some confusion in the media.

The acknowledgement came over the entire course of a 40-minute-long meeting that my team and I had with North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, the number two man in the North Korean foreign ministry and said to be close to Kim Jong Il.

Kang’s remarks were interpreted into English by his own interpreter, and his original Korean presentation was monitored by our side’s experienced professional interpreter.

It was very clear to all members of my team that Kang was acknowledging the existence of a highly enriched uranium program and that North Korea was willing to negotiate about addressing our concerns about it if the United States first provided additional benefits to North Korea.

Thereafter, for nearly two months, even after we publicly stated that the North Koreans had acknowledged the uranium enrichment program to us, the D.P.R.K. did not deny the program or the acknowledgement. Instead, to the rest of the world, the D.P.R.K. essentially took an NCND position -- that is, to ”neither confirm nor deny” the program. Only later, when it became clear that this was a major tactical error that was resulting in massive international criticism, did D.P.R.K. officials first begin to suggest that the United States had misunderstood its statements, and later still that the United States had lied about them. Only much later did the North Koreans actually begin to claim that they have no HEU program.

In any event, the key point in regard to this issue is that the steps taken by the United States subsequent to my mission to Pyongyang in October 2002 were in response not to the North Korean acknowledgement but to our knowledge, based on our own intelligence, of the North Korean uranium enrichment program. We are confident that our intelligence in this matter is well-founded. In fact, the recent confession of Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan suggests that, if anything, the North Korean HEU program is of longer duration and more advanced than we had assessed.

I find this to be somewhat compelling with the caveat that any claim based on U.S. intelligence should be the subject of the strictest scrutiny. It is far from clear what kind of sources the U.S. based its assessment of the DPRK's HEU program on. But Kelly's chronology of the DPRK's own statements about the issue are consistent with my memory (and I'm too tired and lazy to go look it all up).

So what will the U.S. demand in the upcoming six-party talks?

We insist on the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all of North Korea's nuclear programs because we must not again allow a situation in which the North's dismantlement of its nuclear arms program is put off into the distant future, as it was under the Agreed Framework. That would permit North Korea, at any time, to resume its use of nuclear threats to blackmail the international community.

We will not be satisfied with a resolution that is not complete. North Korea must dismantle not only its plutonium program but also its uranium enrichment program and its existing nuclear weapons.

We will not be satisfied with a resolution that is not verifiable. In this regard, the burden is not on the international community but on North Korea to come clean. As the Libya cases illustrates, there are ways that North Korea can do this as a sovereign country. It is certainly in North Korea’s interests, as it is in Libya’s.

We will not be satisfied with a “reversible solution”. This must be once and for all. North Korea’s nuclear programs and facilities must be dismantled, and never reconstituted. Mechanisms can be found to do this that are reasonable. This will not be difficult to accomplish once North Korea has made a fundamental decision to abandon its nuclear programs.

I have little doubt that Libya has been a godsend to the Bush team's approach to non-proliferation.

Moreover, the talks need to remain firmly six-party rather than bilateral:

The two rounds of multilateral talks in Beijing represented important first steps in achieving a fundamental solution of the North Korean nuclear problem. The North Koreans heard from all of the other parties present that a North Korean nuclear weapons capability is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. And the other parties heard first-hand North Korea's threats to expand its nuclear weapons program. This was very important, because, in the past, the North Koreans utilized the tactic of making such threats to the United States while denying them to others -- of taking a hardline position with us while telling others that it was the United States that was hardline.

But it isn’t just the United States that the D.P.R.K. plays off against. During the decades of Sino-Soviet rivalry, North Korea became adept at playing one off against the other. With the end of the Cold War, North Korea has continued to focus on dealing bilaterally with all of its neighbors, playing them off against each other.

The six-party format helps to deny North Korea the opportunity to play its neighbors off, one against the other. The result is increased understanding and solidarity among the six-party participants about the nature and seriousness of the North Korean nuclear problem.

A surprisingly candid expression of the tactical preference for multilateral talks.

Kelly concludes:

North Korea has an opportunity to change its path. As some Americans might put it there is a chance for redemption. The examples of Libya, Ukraine, South Africa and others demonstrate that there is real reason for hope that North Korea will eventually respond. States, even those with existing nuclear arms, can decide that abandoning nuclear weapons is in their interests. Presumably, the intention of the D.P.R.K. leadership in embracing nuclear weapons was to enhance the regime’s security and status. Clearly, the effect has been the opposite. With continued international solidarity, there is good reason to believe that North Korea will eventually rethink its assumptions and reverse course. The Six-Party Talks offer North Korea a path toward international responsibility and increased well being for its people. The United States sincerely hopes that the D.P.R.K. will take the opportunity.

My prediction? Nothing substantive will come of the next round of six-party talks. As I have noted before the DPRK appears to be closely watching the U.S. presidential race. There is little incentive to offer concessions to the hard-line Bush team when a (presumably) more amenable to compromise Kerry administration may be just around the corner. On the other hand, it is unlikely that the DPRK will do anything seriously provocative in the meantime.