The Koreans have yet to reach settlement

The Koreans have yet to reach settlement

The Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin
analyses and comments on the initial agreement attained by North
Korea and the United States after their third round of high-level
talks in Geneva last week.

HONG KONG (JP): In the end it was neither a joint communique
nor a joint statement. It was not even, as some North Korean
diplomats had earlier hinted, a joint declaration.

When the first substantive agreement between the United States
and North Korea, since the Korean Armistice was signed in July
1953, finally emerged in the wee hours of Saturday Aug. 13 in
Geneva, it was in an even lowlier form of diplomatic
documentation - merely an "agreed statement". There was no
signing ceremony by the two chief negotiators. The agreed
statement was just issued.

On Friday Aug. 12 there had been much last minute dilly-
dallying by the North Koreans, to the extent that, at times, it
seemed possible that no agreement was going to come forth.

But, interestingly, when the "agreed statement" finally
emerged, the North Koreans stressed that it was a "weighty and
significant document". It sounded very much as if the new
authorities in North Korea felt the need to justify any deal made
with the nation which Pyongyang has long portrayed as its only
enemy.

Given the size and complexity of the problems posed by the
need for peace on the Korean peninsula, it was hardly weighty.
The "agreed statement" was long on understandings, short on
specifics. It may herald diminished tension between the two
Koreas. Equally it could mean that those tensions will heighten
once again, whenever the North Koreans find it expedient to do
so.

First and last, the "agreed statement" failed to deal with
what the Americans have been asserting is the most immediate
problem in need of solution. Some 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods
recently removed from the North Korean's reactor at Yongbyon are
steadily corroding in cooling ponds, where they can be observed
but not controlled by two inspectors from the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The rods were only referred to indirectly in the "agreed
statement," in a long paragraph dealing with issues raised but
not solved which referred to the need for the "safe storage and
disposition of spent fuel".

According to the Americans, this corrosion could reach
dangerous levels capable of releasing radioactivity by the end of
this month or early September. The North Koreans could then
reprocess the rods, thereby gaining enough plutonium for four or
five atomic bombs.

Under the "agreed statement," the North Koreans will forego
such reprocessing, provided that the U.S. keeps its promises.

But that does not mean that the North Koreans agree to the
most obvious solution, removing the rods to another country --
China has been cited as the most likely destination -- thereby
keeping that plutonium out of their hands. The North Koreans
agreed not to reprocess the rods, but they refused to let them
go, suggesting that, if necessary, the rods can be stored in
concrete.

There is no word in the "agreed statement" about the only
other solution which has been mentioned, that the water in the
cooling ponds should be chemically treated in order to slow down
the corrosion process.

The North Korean chief negotiator Vice Foreign Minister Kang
Sok-ju, asked about the safety of the rods, said that this matter
"would be examined by working-level meetings which will begin
over the next month in the U.S. and North Korea before the next
round of talks".

The inescapable conclusion therefore is that either the
Americans have been exaggerating the speed at which the spent
fuel rods will corrode and emit radioactivity - or else that the
negotiation has failed to reach a satisfactory conclusion on a
critical issue of nuclear safety.

Meanwhile, not to put too fine a point on it, the centerpiece
of the "agreed statement" is, as expected, a big fat bribe, which
the U.S. promises to arrange for North Korea, even though it
hopes that others (such as Japan and South Korea) will provide
the cash.

The North Koreans agree to replace their graphite-moderated
nuclear reactors with light-water reactors (LWRs) having a 2,000
MW capacity, while the "USA is prepared to make arrangements for
the provision of LWRs, and to make arrangements for interim
energy alternatives" to the graphite reactors.

What this last pledge means, in practice, is that the U.S.
will arrange for supplies of oil or some other energy source,
even though, according to what the U.S. has previously said, the
two graphite reactors now being built in North Korea are not
linked to the North Korean electricity grid.

In other words, one of the clues to the North Korean nuclear
weapons program was the fact that one 50 MW and one 200 MW
graphite-moderated reactors were being built - but with no
visible cables running from the reactors to the power system.

Presumably either these past assertions by the U.S. have now
been proven to be false - or else the Americans have swallowed
their satellite-acquired knowledge in order to make a gain.

The gain is, of course, that while the graphite-moderated
reactors produce plutonium, the LWRs are far less able to do so,
and therefore of much less use to a nuclear weapon's program.

Needless to say, this aspect of the agreement would be far
more noteworthy if the North Koreans had agreed to surrender
those 8,000 plutonium-rich fuel rods.

For the rest, the agreed statement is tentative rather than
definitive. North Korea and the U.S. "are prepared to establish
diplomatic representation" in each other's capitals, and to
remove trade barriers, as a move towards normalization of
political and economic relations.

Since mutual recognition is not even mentioned, this
presumably means that the first step will be to set up liaison
offices in Pyongyang and Washington.

Given that the "agreed statement" multiplies the number of
topics on which North Korea and the U.S. have to negotiate with
each other, the question arises as why they did not agree to
liaison offices straight away, rather than at some vague point in
the future.

All told the "agreed statement" is far from being a
substantive breakthrough. At best, it is a first tentative step
down what is likely to be a long and rocky road. The one
clear-cut specific is that high-level U.S.-North Korean
negotiations will resume on Sept. 23, with expert-level
discussions probably held between then and now.

So what does this all mean? In a long-term perspective,
perhaps the best thing that can be said about the North Korean-
U.S. "agreed statement" is that it marks a first uncertain step
away from the previously impenetrable isolation that has been the
background to Pyongyang's often rogue-like behavior.

There is no way of knowing whether this step has been taken as
a result of a conscious directive from the new Great Leader Kim
Jong-il, or because a slightly more open-minded section of the
North Korean political elite is slowly taking charge, and using
Kim as a figure-head.

Whatever the cause, the "agreed statement" makes it possible
to believe that North Korea's hunger to acquire stocks of
plutonium, a key ingredient for atomic bombs, may be about to
diminish; that the day may not be far off when all Western
nations have embassies in Pyongyang; and that North Korea is
about to become more intent upon finding a way to avoid
collapsing - rather than collapsing into a void.

That said, and the "agreed statement", plus the events which
led to it, suggest a damaging and disconcerting conclusion:
nuclear blackmail pays.

Fifteen months ago North Korea threatened to leave the Nuclear
Non Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) when the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) demanded to inspect some suspect sites.

Now North Korea is offered all manner of blandishments to stay
within the NNPT, and promises to do so. But it is still refusing
to allow those special inspections. It is still refusing to
accept the discipline that treaty membership imposes. It is still
refusing to allow IAEA inspectors to seek the true history of
North Korea's nuclear weapons program (NWP). There is nothing in
the "agreed statement" which assures us that Pyongyang will now
accept that the NNPT is a set course meal which all nations must
eat, and not an a la carte menu from which one can pick and
choose.

That is not all. North Korea can now look forward to receiving
one or two light-water reactors (LWR) - plus free interim energy
supplies once its graphite reactors are closed - as a reward for
giving up its assumed NWP.

Assuredly, other small but feisty nations can be forgiven if
they now assume that nuclear intransigence has its own reward.
Additionally, when the United States quite rightly sought to
impose sanctions in response to Pyongyang's willful ways, North
Korea threatened war - and won further negotiations in exchange.

The Americans are not solely to blame for setting this sorry
example. China was positively opposed to sanctions even though,
ostensibly, it did not favor a nuclear Korea. Japan and
influential sections of the South Korean elite did not give the
Americans the support which Washington required, and probably
deserved. East Asia, in short, quailed before North Korea's bluff
and blackmail.

So there is no knowing where these latest developments may
lead. North Korea may yet manage to keep the one or two nuclear
devices it is supposed to possess even as it acquires LWR for
free. Maybe a little appeasement is a valid approach, as the U.S.
tries to bring the Kim dynasty face-to-face with the real world.

But the fear must be that Pyongyang will start to reprocess
those 8,000 plutonium-rich spent fuel rods whenever it suits its
interest to do so, or again threaten war whenever the real world
finds it necessary to apply pressure. Having got away with too
much, it may seek to get away with more. Rogue nations always
behave in this way.

So one hard conclusion presents itself. In the harsh and
unrelenting world of power politics - of which North Korea is an
active member - there is no choice other than to be tough and
tenacious. In relation to North Korea and its NWP, the United
States, aided and abetted by China and Japan, has been neither.