http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/IB24Dg01.html
North Korea: Yes, we have no uranium SEOUL - Anyone reading about nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran is presumably aware that highly enriched uranium - HEU - is about the most powerful explosive yet devised or tested, apparently more devastating in its potential impact than plutonium. Now the debate focuses on two questions about each country's programs. Is North Korea indeed developing the means to produce nuclear warheads from HEU - and does Iran harbor the notion of processing HEU for warheads or sticking to nuclear power for peaceful purposes? In the case of each of these countries, proud charter members of President George W Bush's "axis of evil", denials fly out of the mouths of political leaders, diplomats, spokesmen and propaganda machines like anti-aircraft bullets firing volleys at attacking planes. No, no, North Korea keeps saying, We have no HEU program, and the United States has been lying ever since James Kelly, then assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, claimed for sure North Korea's first deputy foreign minister, Kang Sok-ju, had acknowledged the existence of one when they met in Pyongyang in October 2002. No, no, say Iranian leaders, we are not in the least interested in building nuclear warheads, and the whole reason for our fully acknowledged, highly publicized HEU program is to produce fuel for nuclear power, just like all the advanced countries that are bullying us. Neither debate is likely to be resolved soon, in part because US forces are not poised to invade either country and find out what's really going on. The other reason, at least in the case of North Korea, is that the experts, politicos and diplomats are in utter disagreement, if not disarray, over what North Korea is up to - and, regardless of expertise, their views generally reflect their political viewpoints. Differences rage from Seoul to Washington, where one of the louder voices in the debate is that of David Albright, who first became known for his criticism of US policy on nuclear warheads when he charged several years ago that US claims about Iraqi nukes were highly questionable. Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, based his remarks in part on his background as a United Nations weapons inspector there. Now Albright, back from Pyongyang, which he visited along with Joel Wit, another Washington think-tanker and former State Department expert on North Korea, is saying official US claims about the existence of North Korea's HEU program are about as bogus as were the US claims of any Iraqi nuclear program at all. As in the case of the rationale or pretext that that precipitated the invasion of Iraq, he says, the US view of the North Korean HEU program may be "another case of lack of evidence". Not that Albright really knows. Although he's regarded as a physicist on the basis of master's degrees in physics and math from Midwestern US universities, neither he nor Wit was able to use their expertise while in Pyongyang in the run-up to the latest six-party talks that culminated in the deal for North Korea to give up its nukes, eventually, in return for a vast infusion of energy aid. Instead, they were treated to a great briefing at which they heard North Korea's envoy to the talks, Kim Kye-gwan, deny, for the umpteenth time, that North Korea had an HEU program - the message on which Albright embellished this week. A certain difference, though, exists between North Korea's earlier denials and the latest word from Kim Kye-gwan. This time around, in accordance with the talks in Beijing and his earlier meetings with Christopher Hill, the veteran diplomat who succeeded Kelly, North Korea is willing to try to "clarify" misunderstandings. That's an assurance that Hill is picking up on in defending the US decision, which he personally advocated, to go along with the agreement of February 13, which he duly signed, that neglects all mention of "uranium" - one of those turn-off words, like "human rights", that are guaranteed to drive North Korean negotiators into stony silence, nasty vituperations or both. Thus Hill, at about the time that Albright was spreading doubts about the existence of North Korea's HEU program, covered his tracks by assuring another audience in Washington that yes indeed, "they", meaning Kim Kye-gwan, "have been willing to discuss what we know". The joker in that remark is that Hill isn't quite saying "what we know", suggesting that perhaps, just possibly, the United States might eventually back off an inch or so from the HEU claim. How else, one might ask, would it be conceivable "to try to resolve this", as he put it, "with the idea to resolve this to mutual satisfaction"? Such double-talk and questions also suffuse the debate in Seoul, where fairly high-ranking officials seem to be vying alternately to play down HEU and to show off their resolve to do something about it. Hill's opposite number from South Korea, Chun Young-woo, has danced around the issue with equal grace and equilibrium. Yes, "North Korea has been obtaining materials for HEU", said Chun. "That's a known fact." No, he went on, with careful ambiguity, "we do not have full information where the program is now". That said, Chun poured tepid if not cool water on the whole notion of HEU in North Korea. "Nobody," said Chun, "believes they have an enriched program up and running." Those remarks compound the puzzlement of other pronouncements from Chun, who said earlier this week that North Korea, while reporting on the plutonium it has produced, should also give some idea "how much progress the country has made on its uranium program". Chun's remarks, however veiled, would appear to put him in possible conflict with his boss, Foreign Minister Song Min-soon. Word here is that Song specifically asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a telephone conversation to authorize Hill to agree to dropping the offending "uranium" reference from the deal even though Hill had wanted it in. Rice assented when Song - and Hill too, no doubt - told her the deal was just not going to happen if "uranium" was anywhere in there. And for good measure, just to seal the deal, the US also agreed to begin work on dropping North Korea from the State Department's list of states sponsoring terrorism, much to the chagrin of Japanese leaders still holding out on giving aid to North Korea as long as it refuses to come clean on the fate of all Japanese abducted to that country. Actually, if Albright's remarks are any guide, the Japanese have a lot more to worry about when it comes to North Korean terrorism. Albright quoted Kim Kye-gwan as asking, in a rhetorical flourish, "Does the underground explosion signify much?" The clear inference, Albright suggested, was that North Korea has the capability of miniaturizing nuclear warheads and mounting them on missiles with ranges anywhere in the region. He and analyst Paul Brannan expanded on the theme in a widely quoted report - based, it seemed, on little beyond their own lively imaginations - that speculated that North Korea could conduct another nuclear test and "may detonate a warhead over the sea as a further demonstration". And if such "warning shots" didn't work, they said, North Korean nukes might hit "military targets and population centers" in Japan and South Korea. At about this stage in the debate, South Korea's Defense Ministry weighed in with a sobering reminder of its own - in implicit remonstrance of the soft talk from the Foreign Ministry and the Blue House of President Roh Moo-hyun. "The US nuclear umbrella will be continued under the two countries' alliance treaty" despite plans to transfer overall command in event of war from an American to a South Korean general, said a Defense Ministry statement. "So the nuclear threat from North Korea will be controlled." Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! Groups gets a make over. See the new email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/hOt0.A/lOaOAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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