Author: Jim Hoagland
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: November 10, 2002
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30449-2002Nov8.html
North Korea's determined covert
pursuit of new nuclear weapons may stretch back five years and may now
be on the verge of success. This much is certain: Pyongyang's recently
uncovered nuclear deceit forces the world's powers to reexamine basic attitudes
toward proliferation and deterrence.
The deceit was not a solitary, lunatic
effort to trick the United States and overturn decades of nonproliferation
rules and treaties. This was a calculated, strategic joint venture by North
Korea and Pakistan. They conspired to ignore all rules and agreements --
especially Pyongyang's 1994 deal with the Clinton administration to freeze
development of nuclear weapons -- and to share the right to possess atomic
arsenals and missiles capable of vaporizing their neighbors.
A philosophical line in global nuclear
politics has been crossed. Pakistan helped North Korea construct a secret
centrifuge system of uranium enrichment in return for missile technology
and equipment. But don't assume that this was just a crude barter between
two destitute, irresponsible regimes.
This deal was also an implicit statement
of revolt that reaches beyond local ambitions to confront India or South
Korea or to ensure national survival and sovereignty. Selling or transferring
nuclear-weapons material and technology to nations that have no connection
to your national survival is a significant new development. That is why
the key questions about what has happened -- and why -- must be pursued
with Pakistan as well as North Korea.
The Bush administration is disinclined
to ask President Pervez Musharraf those questions as the war on al Qaeda
continues. That is shortsighted. If Pakistan will break the rules to help
a distant pauper Asian dictatorship, how can it say no to rich Islamic
countries such as Saudi Arabia and Libya when they offer to buy an Islamic
bomb? If there is no accounting from Pakistan, the major powers' pretense
of control over the spread of nuclear weapons is exposed as one more giant
fraud of the past heady decade.
This is Enron and WorldCom to the
tenth power, with mushroom clouds in the background. Forensic accountants
working with the CIA may have helped nail North Korea's crooked balance
sheet. James Kelly, the State Department's top Asia expert, stunned North
Korean officials in October by detailing the fraud.
The North Koreans then stunned Kelly
by acknowledging the program. They even challenged him to do something
about it. Other sources say that the North Koreans possess 2,000 to 3,000
centrifuges and are already enriching uranium.
This description suggests that North
Korea is moving relentlessly toward a self-sustaining point of no return
in the enrichment process. The numbers alone suggest that North Korea may
require no further help from Pakistan to produce new bombs to go with the
pair of atomic devices that Pyongyang assembled before the 1994 agreement
subjected its plutonium-based program to inspections and a freeze.
"We developed hard confirmation
of the program this summer," says a senior Bush administration official,
who cited "shards of evidence" of the North Korea-Pakistan nuclear relationship
going back to 1997. "Those turned into pretty clear suspicions by 1998,
and by 1999 the North Koreans committed to this program."
Clinton administration officials
confirm that timeline. Like Bush aides, they say they cannot know whether
Pyongyang always intended to subvert the 1994 agreement or inexplicably
changed course. But it is clear that the program predates President Bush's
election and his placing of North Korea on the "axis of evil." The trigger
for the deceit happened on Clinton's more amiable watch.
What to do now? "Well, we won't
be getting into an elaborate agreement that depends on North Korea's word,"
says the Bush official. "We are pushing other nations to make it clear
that North Korean entry into the international system can come only after
it abandons this program." In plain English: China must apply pressure
to its Communist-ruled neighbor, and Japan and South Korea must hold back
financial aid and political recognition.
But the problem is broader and graver
than North Korea's dying regime. The spread of nuclear weapons is now not
only a global fact, but also a project and an intention for some of the
Third World's most belligerent and angry regimes. They have watched with
envy as Pakistan openly and repeatedly threatened nuclear war to block
India's conventional retaliation for cross- border terrorism in and from
Kashmir.
The United States must align itself
with responsible nuclear powers that do not proliferate. Britain, France,
India, Russia and Israel appear to fit that category. They must cooperate
to constrain the appetites and abilities of irresponsible nuclear powers.
North Korea and Pakistan stand at the top of the list of irresponsibles,
and they must not be given leeway to help lengthen it.
