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SPEAKING
FREELY
UN Security
Council's tough task
By Tom Tobback
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
BEIJING - On
February 19 the United Nations Security Council decided
to refer the letter it received from the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to its experts for further
consultations before starting the discussion in the
council. Thereby they acknowledged that the North Korean
nuclear issue is a complicated matter, conveniently
oversimplified by the international press into
Pyongyang's non-compliance with the Safeguards
Agreement. Meanwhile Pyongyang is arguing that it no
longer has any relations with the IAEA after it withdrew
from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on January 10,
and that the agency therefore should not intervene in
North Korea's internal affairs. This claim is not given
any attention in international media, to the advantage
of the United States, which favors multilateral talks to
resolve this crisis.
In March 1993, a year after
signing its Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, North
Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT, giving
three months' notice. The US persuaded Pyongyang to
suspend this withdrawal one day before it was going to
become effective, on June 11, 1993. One year later, in
June 1994, North Korea withdrew its IAEA membership. A
couple of months later the nuclear crisis came to an end
with the signing of the Agreed Framework, which
specified that North Korea would remain party to the
NPT, and the IAEA would be allowed to monitor the freeze
of certain facilities. However, North Korea did not
rejoin the IAEA, and the agreement linked full
compliance with the Safeguards Agreement to the
completion of two light-water reactors.
Last
month North Korea announced it was withdrawing from the
NPT with immediate effect, in fact ending the suspension
of its withdrawal in 1993. Thus North Korea joins India,
Pakistan, and Israel, three countries that are not
signatories to the NPT but can get away with that
without having to fear a regime change. Maybe because
they organize elections from time to time.
North
Korea is certainly in breach of the Agreed Framework,
because it ended the freeze of the nuclear facilities at
Yongbyon. However, this commitment was part of a
bilateral deal with the United States in 1994 in which
Washington agreed to provide formal assurances to
Pyongyang against the threat or use of nuclear weapons
by the US, and normalization of political and economic
relations. Whether the IAEA had the right to declare
North Korea in breach of the Safeguards Agreement,
disconnecting the entire matter from the Agreed
Framework as Washington prefers, is a matter the UN
Security Council should examine. Pyongyang has stated
that it does not object to the crisis being discussed in
the UN Security Council, as long as the role of the
United States is also brought up.
IAEA chief
Mohamed ElBaradei has said the Safeguards Agreement
remains in force and binding; nevertheless it is clear
that Pyongyang has a different opinion on this, so the
matter needs to be discussed at least. It is not
difficult to understand why Pyongyang calls the IAEA a
"political waiting maid of the US" after ElBaradei
started to throw around comments on how to solve this
nuclear crisis, clearly overstepping the technical role
of his agency.
The first task of the UN Security
Council will be to determine whether the IAEA-North
Korea Safeguards Agreement is still in force, or whether
the IAEA's specific task in North Korea was a component
of the bilateral Agreed Framework. One hopes that the UN
Security Council will thus seize the opportunity to
consider the root causes of the current crisis, and not
only focus on the DPRK's strained relations with the
IAEA. Washington will try to take advantage of the
multilateral setting of the Security Council to reduce
this crisis to a non-proliferation issue, in order to
alienate Pyongyang further and hide its own Agreed
Framework commitments under a multilateral cover.
Tom Tobback is the founder and editor
of Pyongyang Square, a website
dedicated to providing independent information on North
Korea.
(©2003 Tom Tobback.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
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