North Korea: Yes, we have no uranium
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - Anyone reading about nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran is
presumably aware that highly enriched uranium - HEU - is about the most
powerful explosive yet devised or tested, apparently more devastating in its
potential impact than plutonium.
Now the debate focuses on two questions about each country's programs. Is North
Korea indeed developing the means to produce nuclear warheads from HEU - and
does Iran harbor the notion of
processing HEU for warheads or sticking to nuclear power for peaceful purposes?
In the case of each of these countries, proud charter members of President
George W Bush's "axis of evil", denials fly out of the mouths of political
leaders, diplomats, spokesmen and propaganda machines like volleys of
anti-aircraft fire at attacking planes.
No, no, North Korea keeps saying, We have no HEU program, and the United States
has been lying ever since James Kelly, then assistant secretary of state for
East Asia and the Pacific, claimed for sure North Korea's first deputy foreign
minister, Kang Sok-ju, had acknowledged the existence of one when they met in
Pyongyang in October 2002.
No, no, say Iranian leaders, we are not in the least interested in building
nuclear warheads, and the whole reason for our fully acknowledged, highly
publicized HEU program is to produce fuel for nuclear power, just like all the
advanced countries that are bullying us.
Neither debate is likely to be resolved soon, in part because US forces are not
poised to invade either country and find out what's really going on. The other
reason, at least in the case of North Korea, is that the experts, politicos and
diplomats are in utter disagreement, if not disarray, over what North Korea is
up to - and, regardless of expertise, their views generally reflect their
political viewpoints.
Differences rage from Seoul to Washington, where one of the louder voices in
the debate is that of David Albright, who first became known for his criticism
of US policy on nuclear warheads when he charged several years ago that US
claims about Iraqi nukes were highly questionable. Albright, founder and
president of the Institute for Science and International Security, based his
remarks in part on his background as a United Nations weapons inspector there.
Now Albright, back from Pyongyang, which he visited along with Joel Wit,
another Washington think-tanker and former State Department expert on North
Korea, is saying official US claims about the existence of North Korea's HEU
program are about as bogus as were the US claims of any Iraqi nuclear program
at all. As in the case of the rationale or pretext that that precipitated the
invasion of Iraq, he says, the US view of the North Korean HEU program may be
"another case of lack of evidence".
Not that Albright really knows. Although he's regarded as a physicist on the
basis of master's degrees in physics and math from Midwestern US universities,
neither he nor Wit was able to use their expertise while in Pyongyang in the
run-up to the latest six-party talks that culminated in the deal for North
Korea to give up its nukes, eventually, in return for a vast infusion of energy
aid.
Instead, they were treated to a great briefing at which they heard North
Korea's envoy to the talks, Kim Kye-gwan, deny, for the umpteenth time, that
North Korea had an HEU program - the message on which Albright embellished this
week.
A certain difference, though, exists between North Korea's earlier denials and
the latest word from Kim Kye-gwan. This time around, in accordance with the
talks in Beijing and his earlier meetings with Christopher Hill, the veteran
diplomat who succeeded Kelly, North Korea is willing to try to "clarify"
misunderstandings.
That's an assurance that Hill is picking up on in defending the US decision,
which he personally advocated, to go along with the agreement of February 13,
which he duly signed, that neglects all mention of "uranium" - one of those
turn-off words, like "human rights", that are guaranteed to drive North Korean
negotiators into stony silence, nasty vituperations or both.
Thus Hill, at about the time that Albright was spreading doubts about the
existence of North Korea's HEU program, covered his tracks by assuring another
audience in Washington that yes indeed, "they", meaning Kim Kye-gwan, "have
been willing to discuss what we know".
The joker in that remark is that Hill isn't quite saying "what we know",
suggesting that perhaps, just possibly, the United States might eventually back
off an inch or so from the HEU claim. How else, one might ask, would it be
conceivable "to try to resolve this", as he put it, "with the idea to resolve
this to mutual satisfaction"?
Such double-talk and questions also suffuse the debate in Seoul, where fairly
high-ranking officials seem to be vying alternately to play down HEU and to
show off their resolve to do something about it. Hill's opposite number from
South Korea, Chun Young-woo, has danced around the issue with equal grace and
equilibrium.
Yes, "North Korea has been obtaining materials for HEU", said Chun. "That's a
known fact." No, he went on, with careful ambiguity, "we do not have full
information where the program is now".
That said, Chun poured tepid if not cool water on the whole notion of HEU in
North Korea. "Nobody," said Chun, "believes they have an enriched program up
and running."
Those remarks compound the puzzlement of other pronouncements from Chun, who
said earlier this week that North Korea, while reporting on the plutonium it
has produced, should also give some idea "how much progress the country has
made on its uranium program".
Chun's remarks, however veiled, would appear to put him in possible conflict
with his boss, Foreign Minister Song Min-soon. Word here is that Song
specifically asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a telephone
conversation to authorize Hill to agree to dropping the offending "uranium"
reference from the deal even though Hill had wanted it in.
Rice assented when Song - and Hill too, no doubt - told her the deal was just
not going to happen if "uranium" was anywhere in there. And for good measure,
just to seal the deal, the US also agreed to begin work on dropping North Korea
from the State Department's list of states sponsoring terrorism, much to the
chagrin of Japanese leaders still holding out on giving aid to North Korea as
long as it refuses to come clean on the fate of all Japanese abducted to that
country.
Actually, if Albright's remarks are any guide, the Japanese have a lot more to
worry about when it comes to North Korean terrorism.
Albright quoted Kim Kye-gwan as asking, in a rhetorical flourish, "Does the
underground explosion signify much?" The clear inference, Albright suggested,
was that North Korea has the capability of miniaturizing nuclear warheads and
mounting them on missiles with ranges anywhere in the region.
He and analyst Paul Brannan expanded on the theme in a widely quoted report -
based, it seemed, on little beyond their own lively imaginations - that
speculated that North Korea could conduct another nuclear test and "may
detonate a warhead over the sea as a further demonstration". And if such
"warning shots" didn't work, they said, North Korean nukes might hit "military
targets and population centers" in Japan and South Korea.
At about this stage in the debate, South Korea's Defense Ministry weighed in
with a sobering reminder of its own - in implicit remonstrance of the soft talk
from the Foreign Ministry and the Blue House of President Roh Moo-hyun.
"The US nuclear umbrella will be continued under the two countries' alliance
treaty" despite plans to transfer overall command in event of war from an
American to a South Korean general, said a Defense Ministry statement. "So the
nuclear threat from North Korea will be controlled."
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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