North Korea's hidden nuclear programs

By FANG JUE
Published: July 14, 2008 

New York, NY, United States, — The sixth round of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programs took place from July 10 to 12 in Beijing, with all parties agreeing that positive progress had been made. The six nations – China, North Korea, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States – issued a joint press communiqué at the end of the meeting, stating that the progress made in this second phase of implementing the Joint Statement agreed in September, 2005, would contribute to peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

The press communiqué carried little substantial content and there are several critical problems it did not address.

First of all, the purpose of this meeting was to discuss verification of North Korea's denuclearization. But it avoided the most significant issue – specifying what exactly is to be verified. North Korean's nuclear development involves both plutonium and uranium.

North Korea has generated several kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium and has produced several dirty bombs using plutonium. One such bomb was used for an underground nuclear test in October of 2006.

The verification activities discussed at the six-party meeting only referred to the quantity of plutonium produced, and the facilities where it has been produced. They did not include the dirty bombs, nor did they include uranium. In other words, they dealt with only half of North Korean's nuclear programs. Can such an approach to verification bring about North Korea's denuclearization?

Secondly, this meeting basically excluded the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, the main international organization responsible for overseeing and inspecting nuclear activities of all countries, from verifying North Korea's nuclear development. Instead, the press communiqué said only that the IAEA would be welcome to provide consultation and assistance in the task of verification, if necessary.

This makes the verification issue a matter of bargaining among a few countries, rather than an issue of objective international supervision and inspection. And it deprives the IAEA of its conventional role and responsibility. Without the participation of the IAEA, the verification process appears random, uncertain and lacking in international credibility.

Thirdly, the principle of consensus based on negotiations among the six counties was emphasized in the press communiqué. "The specific plans and implementation of the verification will be decided by the Working Group on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in line with the principle of consensus," it claimed. This principle implies that a decision on verification can only be achieved when all the six parties, including North Korea itself, agree.

North Korea, as a participant in the six-party talks, formerly refused to allow international verification of its programs. Now it appears it will allow verification of half its programs – those based on plutonium – and their production facilities. Yet it will likely continue to create new difficulties, ask for new rewards and offer new excuses for delaying the implementation of plans to verify its activities.

If the verification is to be expanded to other areas – the plutonium dirty bombs and the field of uranium – it will be hard to reach "consensus" with North Korea. Does a failure to reach consensus with North Korea mean it can maintain its current bombs and its uranium program in secret, so that it can possess dirty bombs made with uranium in the future?

In brief, it is inappropriate to adopt the principle of "consensus" in dealing with North Korea's denuclearization. On the contrary, it is obligatory to thoroughly examine all areas of nuclear development in North Korea in order to realize denuclearization. Without coercion, it will remain a country of nuclear weapons, of nuclear expansion, of blackmail for nuclear development and China's partner in nuclearization.

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(Fang Jue is a political activist and freelance writer living in the United States. He was a former government official in China and worked at the Politics Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was a visiting scholar at the Fairbanks Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University in 2003. This article is translated and edited from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Fang Jue.)

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