[Column] In N.K. denuclearization, U.S. should refrain from repeating its mistakes

Posted on : 2007-03-19 14:46 KST Modified on : 2007-03-19 14:46 KST

By Selig S. Harrison

On November 19, 2002, the CIA presented its often-quoted assessment to Congress that North Korea "is constructing a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational, which could be as soon as mid-decade."

Ever since, the U.S. administration has been backing away from this assessment, saying only that Pyongyang is "pursuing uranium enrichment," as former CIA director Porter Goss told Congress last year. Now, as U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill seeks to carry out the promising February 13 denuclearization agreement with Pyongyang, he has been forced to reveal that the intelligence community is no longer sure whether there actually is such a plant.

What the evidence does show, he disclosed in a recent speech, is that North Korea imported equipment that could be used for uranium enrichment, but "it would require a lot more equipment than we know that they have actually purchased" to make the thousands of centrifuge cascades needed for a weapons-grade uranium enrichment facility.

Former U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton is seeking to shoot down the February 13 agreement by reviving the 2002 CIA assessment. Unless North Korea discloses where the secret weapons grade enrichment plant is located and opens it up to inspectors, Bolton and like-minded allies in the Bush administration argue, the denuclearization deal should be called off. So it was necessary for Hill to counter Bolton's strategy by calling the 2002 assessment into question.

"John Bolton's body is out of the State Department," Hill commented to me over the lunch table, "but his hand is still in."

In the denuclearization negotiations now beginning, Pyongyang should be prepared to give a credible accounting of how the suspect equipment was used. If it should turn out, as North Korean officials have told me, that it was used only for an R and D "laboratory" to explore low-level enrichment for civilian nuclear power generation, the laboratory must be placed under international inspection to insure that it does not develop into a weapons-grade program. Low-level enrichment is permitted under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Suspicions of North Korean interest in uranium enrichment were aroused initially by indications that Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove, A.Q. Khan, had given centrifuges to Pyongyang in exchange for missiles. President Pervez Musharraf has now revealed in his recently published memoirs that the number of centrifuges was about two dozen, not nearly enough to conduct even low-level enrichment. They were only prototypes, accompanied by blueprints, and it was left to North Korea to import the extensive and complex equipment needed to make enough centrifuges for significant enrichment operations.

Musharraf did confirm, however, that the prototypes included an unspecified number of Pakistan's advanced P-2 type of centrifuge. This is what made the CIA jump when evidence surfaced in 2002 of North Korean efforts to purchase aluminum tubes that were just the right size to go with the P-2. As Hill has emphasized, however, all that is known for sure is that Pyongyang "attempted" to purchase aluminum tubes from Germany, and that there are "some indications that they were successful in getting some of these tubes elsewhere."

Japan has repeatedly blocked North Korean attempts to buy small numbers of the type of electrical frequency converters needed in centrifuges. But as a careful study by the International Institute of Strategic Studies observed, "hundreds" of such converters would be required for a production-scale enrichment facility equipped with enough centrifuges to make weapons-grade enriched uranium. The IISS study concluded that such "failures in Pyongyang's procurement efforts suggest that North Korea may still lack key components," especially a special grade of steel needed for centrifuge rotors and caps and rotor bearings.

It is not yet clear, and may never be, what led the CIA to tell Congress flatly that North Korea was building a weapons-grade uranium enrichment facility. Did satellite reconnaissance imagery point to the suspect construction site of a possible enrichment plant? If so, nothing has been heard about it since. In any case, it is clear that Bush administration hard-liners, led by Bolton, were looking for an excuse to abrogate the Agreed Framework, which they regarded as appeasement. With Bolton leading the charge, they seized on the CIA assessment as a rationale for ending the 1994 accord, shifting to a confrontational, regime-change policy and outflanking others, notably then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who wanted to pursue new negotiations with Pyongyang.

This was not just a case of an intelligence failure, but of the deliberate distortion and exaggeration of intelligence to serve a political agenda, as in the case of Iraq. The results have been disastrous. It was only after the freeze was abrogated that North Korea resumed the accumulation of the plutonium that enabled it to conduct its recent nuclear test.

Given its evidence of equipment imports, the Bush administration should have confronted North Korea through secret diplomacy with this evidence and demanded an explanation, as it will now do in the negotiations on the February 13 agreement. Its objective should have been to resolve the issue without disrupting the 1994 accord. But the administration wanted a confrontation. When I said at a recent Washington meeting that they had "thrown the baby out with the bathwater," Robert Gallucci, who negotiated the 1994 accord, dissented, saying, " they drowned the baby in the bathwater."

If North Korea refuses to address the suspicions concerning equipment imports, Hill's denuclearization agreement is likely to collapse, and even if Pyongyang does admit to a uranium R and D program, Bolton will no doubt argue against permitting it to proceed, even under inspection. But since North Korea, like Iran, is permitted under the NPT to make low-enriched uranium fuel for civilian nuclear reactors, Pyongyang is not likely to move to full denuclearization unless this right is accepted, and unless it is eventually permitted to acquire light water civilian nuclear reactors for electricity generation when and if its nuclear weapons program is dismantled.

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