News Analysis
North Korea ups the ante, yet again
By Elizabeth Manning, UPI Deputy International Editor
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- North Korea has ratcheted up tensions on the Korean peninsula in two ways revealed recently -- both by telling international nuclear inspectors to pack their bags and by briefly but apparently deliberately violating the 1953 armistice with several armed forays December into the Demilitarized Zone.
The International Atomic Energy Agency's
chief said he received a letter from North Korea's atomic energy
director, which told him the IAEA, inspectors' mission was over.
Ri Je Son said the country had lifted the freeze on its plutonium-based
nuclear program because the United States had virtually broken
off the 1994 agreement that obligated North Korea to shut it down,
according to a translation of a North Korean radio report.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said from the nuclear
watchdog's Vienna headquarters that he asked North Korea to confirm
its commitment to nuclear safeguards and allow IAEA inspectors
to stay.
"Together with the loss of cameras and seals, the departure of inspectors would practically bring to an end our ability to monitor DPRK's nuclear program or assess its nature," ElBaradei declared in a statement. "This is one step further step away from diffusing the crisis." The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the formal name of North Korea.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said North Korea's actions were aimed to "advance its nuclear weapon capability."
Calling Pyongyang's decision to expel the IAEA inspectors "yet another violation of the IAEA safeguards agreements," Reeker said: "North Korea's actions in the past several days belie its announced justification to produce electricity. These actions are not designed to produce electricity. They are rather to advance North Korea's weapon capability."
He said the United States remains in close contact with the IAEA and with friends and allies including South Korea and Japan.
"We call upon the DPRK to reverse its current course, to take all steps necessary to come into compliance with the IAEA safeguards agreement and to eliminate nuclear weapons program in a verifiable manner."
In what several Korean experts told United Press International was a related signal, North Korean soldiers apparently carried light machine guns in and out of the Demilitarized Zone several days in December. The move is not unprecedented but the openness with which they conducted their exercises is new, sources said.
"North Korea violates on a very regular basis all aspects of the 1953 armistice agreement" that ended the Korean War, said Balbina Hwang of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. "But given everything else that is going on, I think it's definitely part of a calculated effort to up the ante, to test the resolve of South Korea and the United States."
Pyongyang is "doing everything it can to poke the United States," said another Asia policy expert, Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. "It's tactical, but it's also serious."
Nevertheless, a signal does not necessarily mean a provocation -- a distinction the North Koreans have shown they are masters at crafting. For example, the soldiers carried type-73 machine guns, not heavy weapons, and apparently took them back out with them each day on Dec. 13 and Dec. 16-20, according to the U.N. Command in Seoul.
"There's a lot of theater that goes on in the DMZ. I wouldn't get carried away about that at this point," said Joel Wit of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The inspectors are another story. My hunch is that the North Koreans mean business this time."
An IAEA spokeswoman said that for the moment two inspectors are still at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, about 55 miles north of the capital Pyongyang. However, "we can't force inspectors" on a host country, and "they will have to leave" if North Korea indeed tells them to, Melissa Fleming told UPI.
Ri's letter reportedly says the Stalinist country decided to resume its plutonium-based nuclear program because the United States cut off heavy oil shipments, having already included the country in President George Bush's axis of evil and -- according to a translation by the British Broadcasting Corp. -- North Korea is "a target for its (America's) preemptive nuclear attack."
The United States agreed to give North Korea 500,000 tons of heavy oil annually in exchange for North Korea shutting down its Soviet-style nuclear reactors, whose waste can be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium. Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea is also to receive, at international expense, two light-water reactors that do not produce plutonium but are currently at least five years behind schedule.
In October Pyongyang admitted it had a separate but equally provocative program to enrich uranium. While uranium-based programs are not addressed directly under the Agreed Framework, the United States declared North Korea in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the agreement and suspended its energy aid.
Two weeks ago North Korea said it was compelled to replace the energy sources and thus would restart its plutonium-based reactors. In the last week technicians have dismantled IAEA monitoring equipment and unsealed their mothballed facilities. On Tuesday they began to move fresh rods out of storage and into the reactor building at Yongbyon.
"The reprocessing facility at Yongbyon is irrelevant to the DPRK ability to produce electricity," ElBaradei said Wednesday. "The DPRK has no current legitimate peaceful use for plutonium, given the status of its nuclear fuel cycle."
The IAEA director general called North Korea's actions "tantamount to nuclear brinkmanship."
The Yongbyon reactor is very small, only 5 megawatts in its rating of possible power output. At the time it shut down its program, North Korea had at least two larger reactors under construction that were rated at 50 and 200 megawatts.
Spokeswoman Fleming said IAEA was consulting with its board of governors and member states. "But if you think about the situation with Iraq, you know it's very difficult to make any assessment of nuclear capability without inspectors present," she said.
The IAEA returned to Iraq late last month under the umbrella of U.N. Resolution 1441 after a four-year absence.
At the U.N. headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed his concern Friday over the recent developments.
"He urges the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to cooperate fully with the IAEA and not to undertake actions that could further complicate matters," read a U.N. statement, which furthermore called on "all parties concerned to make every effort to resolve the situation in accordance with international norms."