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| Sunday, 13 March 2005 |
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Triangle of nuclear strife continues Globescan by M.P. Muthiah The US Ambassador to South Korea, Christopher Hill, has warned North Korea would face grave consequences if it did not participate at the six-way talks on ending its nuclear weapons. As a known advocate of using sanctions against North Korea, he echoed the voice of Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. A former US envoy to South Korea and China, James Lilley, said at the Congress that his country's drive to eliminate North Korea's nuclear program would not proceed unless Washington works more closely with China and South Korea. Both these countries are reluctant to cut the aid that keeps North Korea afloat. Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation's Executive Director, Charles Kartman said the US negotiators need flexibility if six-party talks were to remove nuclear weapons from North Korea. Chinese Foreign Minister, Li Zhoxing, expressed doubt that the United States had good intelligence about North Korea's nuclear program. China had also rejected appeals by the US administration to pressure North Korea dismantle any nuclear bombs as its infrastructure for producing nuclear fuel. These are reactions within the United States after North Korea's announcement that it had nuclear weapons. It had also decided not to rejoin the six-way talks, consisting of South and North Korea, Japan, Russia, China and the United States, after US President George W. Bush's inaugural speech and after the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labelled North Korea as one of the "outposts of tyranny". North Korea said in a statement that Washington's alleged attempt to topple the regime" compelled to take measures to bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy, chosen by its people". The Bush administration in its second term of office has targeted North Korea and Iran not as 'axis of evil' but 'rule of tyranny' countries. Words have changed from first and second administrations, but the essence of objective is same, the overthrowing of regimes in these countries. North Korea's weapons programs dates back to the 1980s. It focused on practical uses of nuclear energy and the completion of a nuclear weapon development system. However, the US officials were able to announce for the first time that they had intelligence data that a nuclear reactor was being built in Taechon and Yongbyon. These installations had been known for eight years from IAEA reports. In 1985, North Korea acceded to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT). In early 1988, South Korean President Roh Tae Woo urged for new efforts to provide North-South exchange, family reunification, inter Korean trade, and contact in international fora. When North Korea's Deputy Prime Minister Kim Tal Hyon visited South Korea for economic talks in 1992, President Roh Tae Woo, the proxy of the United States, announced that full North-South economic cooperation would not be possible without resolution of North Korean nuclear issue. Thus, the little progress achieved was stalled in 1992. North Korea's agreement to accept IAEA safeguards initiated a series of IAEA inspection of North Korea's nuclear facilities. However, North Korea justifiably disallowed to special inspections of unreported facilities. These and other pressures made North Korea to announce the withdrawal from the NPT. This brought the North-South dialogue to an abrupt halt. Former US President Bill Clinton, in an interview with the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, on March 5,2005 said: "In 1994, North Korea had those fuel rods, highly valuable for producing missile material for nuclear weapons. So we agreed with the North Koreans that they would secure the spent fuel rods, they would not build the secure nuclear reactor with 200 megawatts. They could have been building 10 or 12 nuclear weapons, if we had not done that in 1994." North Korea is cooperating with Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation that comprises South Korea, the United States and Japan. KEDO has reached an agreement on the provision of the light-water nuclear reactor by 2003, and in return North Korea has frozen its nuclear program. South Korea, which has promised to bear the lion's share of the reactor project cost estimated at US$ 4.5 billion, was asking the US to put up at least a symbolic amount. However, the US it can make no contribution to the construction cost. The issue began in October 2003, when the US officials accused North Korea of running a secret uranium enrichment program and it was the violation of international treaties. Washington and its allies cut off free oil support for North Korea under a 1994 deal with the US. The crisis that began in 2004 further intensified with the North Korea's announcement on February 10, 2005, that it had nuclear weapons. The US, as its Secretary of State in 1960s said, that to use the famine North Korea experienced during the drought and the shortages of electricity as a bait for subduing Pyongyong. A former North Korean envoy said: "Now that we are members of the nuclear club, we can start talking on an equal footing. In the past the US tried to whip us. This was the right thing to do, to declare ourselves a nuclear power. The US had been talking not only about economic sanctions, but regime change. We have the right to protect ourselves." The Director of the centre for peaceful Future of Korea, Women Making Peace, based in South Korea, Gyung-Lan Jung in a statement said: "North Korea considers the Bush Administration's policy has designed to antagonise, isolate and stifle DPRK, and is very worried about regime change. We understand that North Korea considers nuclear weapons a means of self-defense, and views its possession of nuclear weapons as a self-defense measure, a position stemming from its security anxiety over the US's hardline policy. The DPRK affirms the principles of dialogue and negotiations as the way to solve the issue, and that clarify the ultimate goal of denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. We therefore, oppose any economic sanctions or military attack against North Korea in retaliation for its declaration of possession of nuclear weapons. South Korea needs to fulfil its duty of comprehensive and substantive economic assistance to the North, and to create the circumstances that will assure the security of North Korea." |
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