N. Korea nuclear crisis comes to a head

N. Korea nuclear crisis comes to a head

Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey
Stockwin explains why the Korean crisis has come to a head,
and why the imposition of sanctions may not be easily achieved.

HONG KONG (JP): The International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) "has concluded that the limited opportunity which had
remained for it to select, segregate and secure fuel rods for later
measurements has been lost."

With these simple words, taken from IAEA director Hans Blix's
letter to UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali last Thursday,
the crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapon's program has finally
come to a head.

After 15 months of toing and froing, dithering and debating,
and of endless unresolved policy arguments in Seoul and Washington
DC between "hawks" and "doves", the North Koreans appear to have
finally stepped over the brink.

The immediate issue was IAEA's ability to monitor the
replacement of the fuel rods in the North Korean nuclear reactor in
Yongbyon.

As they have done so often since March 1993, the North Koreans
wanted to lay down their rules, rather than follow those laid down
by IAEA under the safeguards agreement attached to the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NNPT). The North Koreans said they would chose
the rods for inspection, and put them aside until other matters had
been settled.

The IAEA, backed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
earlier last week, said no. It alone must chose the rods, from which
it would be able to deduce whether the North Koreans had already
extracted plutonium, usable in atomic bomb-making. The North
Koreans hastily pushed ahead regardless.

So, said Blix, "any future measurements of that fuel would have
no practical value. The situation, resulting from the (North Korean)
core discharge, is irreversible."

The North Koreans had not fulfilled their NNPT obligations on
two crucial counts.

They have blocked the IAEA from inspecting two suspected
nuclear-related sites amid the Yongbyon facilities -- sites over
which U.S. satellite photographs had aroused justified suspicion.

Now they have also blocked the mandatory IAEA verification of a
fuel change in a declared reactor.

Essentially North Korean brinkmanship has created two crises,
not just one.

First, were the latest North Korean moves allowed to stand, it
would be tantamount to tearing up the NNPT, one year before it is
due to be extended. None of the five major nuclear powers (the U.S.,
Russia, China, France and Britain), who are also the five permanent
members of the UNSC, have come out in favor of scrapping the
treaty. But if North Korea is allowed to get away with setting its
own verification procedures, and ignoring IAEA, the treaty is
already dead.

Second, the latest North Korean moves inevitably further
heighten tension on the perennially troubled Korean peninsula. No
peace treaty was ever concluded in the wake of the armistice ending
the 1950-53 war, itself brought about by North Korea's attempt to
overrun South Korea. In the last few weeks, another facet of North
Korean brinkmanship has been its threat to abandon that armistice.

Backing up this threat, on May 30 the North Koreans withdrew
their equipment from the hall housing the Military Armistice
Commission (MAC) in the truce village of Panmunjom, which lies in
the middle of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas.

The MAC is the key institution overseeing the armistice. The
North Koreans withdrew their MAC personnel early in May. They are
demanding that the United States negotiate a peace treaty with them
alone, since South Korea was never a signatory to the Korean
armistice.

Faced with the twin threat to the NNPT, and to peace on the
Korean peninsula, it is obviously of critical importance that North
Korea now gets the right message from the UNSC and the international
community.

North Korean intransigence is built upon the fact that, in
Pyongyang, the Great Leader President Kim Il-sung, and his son the
Dear Leader Kim Jong-il are believed to have constructed a "worker's
paradise", fit for all Koreans to enjoy.

More graphically, as former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea (and
subsequently to China) James Lilley put it in a May 31 speech in the
US -- "if you pet these guys, you end up missing an arm, because
they do have a track record of blowing up airplanes, assassinating
presidents, blowing up cabinets, digging tunnels, (and of) surprise
attacks. You have to be very careful with them that you don't give
the wrong message".

Three difficult calculations surround the message which the
U.S. is now asking the UNSC to give: the imposition of sanctions on
North Korea.

First, sanctions inevitably involve the issue of war and peace.
From the start of this crisis. North Korea has threatened to regard
sanctions as an act of war to which it will respond in kind. On June
2 North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Young-Nam warned of "devastating
consequences menacing peace in Asia and the rest of the world" if the
United Nations imposed sanctions.

Clearly these continuous threats have had a sobering effect,
especially upon "doves". North Korea has nearly a million armed men
close to the DMZ. Even with its intelligence on high alert, the US
and South Korea would have little warning if that army decided to
move.

Noting the impact of its threats, the North Koreans have gone
on repeating them. But now the issue of IAEA. NNPT, UNSC and U.S.
credibility is involved. As President Clinton put it in Rome May 2,
inadvertently emphasizing where past policy had fallen down. "I
believe that in the end, when we move to Security Council
discussions, we will come out with a policy that will show resolve".

Second, there is the issue of whether sanctions will do any
good. As Kim II sung himself blithely observed in a recent rare
interview, North Korea is so isolated, sanctions can hardly make
much difference.

Kim's word may have concealed his anxiety. It can be argued
that North Korea's few substantial links with the outside world are
crucial simply because they are so few. China provides North Korea's
food imports, its oil and some other fuel requirements. Japan and to
a lesser extent Russia provide foreign exchange.

Without the continuous legal or illegal flow of profits from
Korean-owned Japanese pachinko parlors, Pyongyang lacks the foreign
exchange which China is now demanding for its oil. Without Chinese
petrol the 11,000 North Korean tanks cannot even begin to hope to
drive again towards the southern South Korean post of Pusan.

Third, what holds the UNSC back from imposing sanctions is the
very real fear that an even more isolated North Korea might
collapse.

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