Ed Pearl
Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:36:49 -0700
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100906A.shtml
All Nine Nuclear Powers Are Violating Non-Proliferation Treaty
By Scott Galindez
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 09 October 2006
As North Korea becomes the eighth confirmed nuclear power (Israel is not
confirmed but considered the ninth) some of the blame has to go to the
original five nuclear powers. When the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went
into effect in 1970, the five countries who had nuclear bombs - the US,
France, China, Great Britain, and the USSR - agreed to work to reduce and
eventually eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
Now, 36 years later, no disarmament talks are taking place between those
countries. North Korea has been a "threshold" country since the late 80s.
The fall of the Soviet Union eliminated shared security arrangements and
prompted North Korea to aggressively pursue a nuclear weapon.
The Clinton administration, recognizing the threat, entered into an
agreement with North Korea to provide reactors for peaceful use in exchange
for an end to the weapons program. In 2003, North Korea announced they were
leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty and reconstituting its weapons program,
citing US failure to deliver the reactors.
North Korea's joining the list of nations with nuclear weapons is a sad
day for our world. As was the day that the United States became the first
nuclear power, and the Soviet Union the second, etc.. As long as one country
possesses the ability to annihilate another it is only natural for those
without that power to seek it.
In the early 90s, during the lead-up to the extension of the treaty, the
US and other nuclear powers agreed to stop testing nuclear weapons. It was
widely believed that without that step many other "threshold" nations would
not have remained in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has been a long time
since the original five nuclear powers have made any progress in negotiating
a reduction in their arsenals; in fact the Bush administration is building
new lower-yield nukes with conventional uses that could spur a new arms
race.
If all of the nuclear powers that are condemning North Korea are serious
about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, perhaps they should read and
come into compliance with the following section of the treaty they first
signed in 1970 and extended in 1995:
Article VI Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue
negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of
the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a
treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective
international control.
It should also be noted that it is possible for countries to leave the
nuclear club. North Korea would have been the 10th country if South Africa
hadn't abolished their nuclear weapons.
Iran May Not Be Next
In 2003, during his winning presidential campaign in Brazil, candidate
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticized the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty as
unfair. "If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot while he comes at
me with a cannon, what good does that do?" da Silva asked in a speech. He
later said Brazil has no intention to develop nuclear arms. That is a good
thing; I support non-proliferation, but the sentiment that da Silva
expressed will continue to grow as more and more nations feel they are being
conned by the nuclear powers.
Let us hope that North Korea is the last to build the bomb, but let's
also hope that one day North Korea, France, Great Britain, Israel, Pakistan,
India, Russia, China, and the United States dismantle the bombs they have
and eliminate the threat of nuclear annihilation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Galindez is the Managing Editor of Truthout.
***
Reported Test "Fundamentally Changes the Landscape" for US Officials
By Glenn Kessler
The Washington Post
Monday 09 October 2006
North Korea's apparent nuclear test last night may well be regarded as a
failure of the Bush administration's nuclear nonproliferation policy.
Since George W. Bush became president, North Korea has restarted its
nuclear reactor and increased its stock of weapons-grade plutonium, so it
may now have enough for 10 or 11 weapons, compared with one or two when Bush
took office. North Korea's test could also unleash a nuclear arms race in
Asia, with Japan and South Korea feeling pressure to build nuclear weapons
for defensive reasons.
Yet a number of senior U.S. officials have said privately that they
would welcome a North Korean test, regarding it as a clarifying event that
would forever end the debate within the Bush administration about whether to
solve the problem through diplomacy or through tough actions designed to
destabilize North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's grip on power.
Now U.S. officials will push for tough sanctions at the U.N. Security
Council, and are considering a raft of largely unilateral measures,
including stopping and inspecting every ship that goes in and out of North
Korea.
"This fundamentally changes the landscape now," one U.S. official said
last night.
When Bush became president in 2000, Pyongyang's reactor was frozen under
a 1994 agreement with the United States. Clinton administration officials
thought they were so close to a deal limiting North Korean missiles that in
the days before he left office, Bill Clinton seriously considered making the
first visit to Pyongyang by a U.S. president.
But conservatives had long been deeply skeptical of the deal freezing
North Korea's program - known as the Agreed Framework - in part because it
called for building two light-water nuclear reactors (largely funded by the
Japanese and South Koreans). When then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
publicly said in early 2001 that he favored continuing Clinton's approach,
Bush rebuked him.
Bush then labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" that included
Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, further riling Pyongyang. U.S. officials say
Bush carried a deep, visceral hatred of Kim and his dictatorial regime, and
often chafed at efforts by his advisers to tone down his language about Kim,
who within North Korea is regarded as a near-deity.
The missile negotiations with North Korea ended and no talks were held
between senior U.S. and North Korean officials for nearly two years. Many
top U.S. officials were determined to kill the Agreed Framework, and when
U.S. intelligence discovered evidence that North Korea had a clandestine
program to enrich uranium, they had their chance.
A U.S. delegation confronted Pyongyang about the secret program - and
U.S. officials said North Korean officials appeared to confirm it.
(Pyongyang later denied that.) The United States pressed to cut off
immediately deliveries of heavy fuel oil promised under the Agreed
Framework. North Korea, in response, evicted international inspectors and
restarted its nuclear reactor.
Pyongyang moved quickly to reprocess 8,000 spent fuel rods - previously
in a cooling pond under 24-hour international surveillance - in order to
obtain the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration, hampered by internal disputes,
struggled to fashion a diplomatic effort to confront North Korea. Unlike the
Clinton administration - which suggested to North Korea that it would attack
if Pyongyang moved to reprocess the plutonium - the Bush administration
never set out "red lines" that North Korea must not cross. Bush
administration officials argued that doing so would only tempt North Korea
to cross those lines.
Whereas Clinton had reached the Agreed Framework through lengthy
bilateral negotiations, the Bush administration felt that North Korea would
be less likely to wiggle out of a future deal if it also included its
regional neighbors - China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. But it took
months of internal struggles to arrange the meetings - and North Korea
insisted it wanted to have only bilateral talks with the United States.
It was also difficult to coordinate policies with the other parties. The
talks largely stalled, as North Korea continued to build its stockpile of
plutonium.
After Bush was reelected, new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
launched an effort to revitalize the six-nation talks, which a year ago
yielded a "statement of principles" to guide future negotiations, including
the possibility of major economic help, security assurances and
normalization of relations with the United States if North Korea dismantled
its nuclear programs. To the anger of conservatives within the
administration, the statement also suggested that North Korea might one day
be supplied with light-water reactors as envisioned in the Clinton deal.
But that proved to be the high point of the talks. The administration
issued a statement saying the reactor project was officially terminated -
and North Korea would need to pass many hurdles before it could ever
envision having a civilian nuclear program. The Treasury Department,
meanwhile, focused on North Korea illicit counterfeiting activities,
targeting a bank in Macao that reportedly held the personal accounts of Kim
and his family. Many banks around the world began to refuse to deal with
North Korean companies, further angering Pyongyang.
With the end of the negotiating track marking the likely advent of
sanctions, Pyongyang's action will test the proposition of those Bush
administration officials who argued that a confrontational approach would
finally bring North Korea to heel.
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