A senior U.S. official yesterday brought back the Bush administration's claim that North Korea appears to be enriching uranium for nuclear weapons purposes, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Jan. 7).
(Jan. 8) -
White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley reiterated warnings yesterday that North Korea might have a secret uranium enrichment program (Jim Watson/Getty Images).
Pyongyang stands to pose "an early challenge" to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20, national security adviser Stephen Hadley said during a speech in Washington. He reaffirmed Washington's demand for a comprehensive verification program of North Korea's nuclear activities as part of the continuing denuclearization effort.
"This is especially true because some in the intelligence community have increasing concerns that North Korea has an ongoing covert uranium enrichment program," Hadley said.
North Korea is known to operate a plutonium-based weapons program that is believed to have produced sufficient material to fuel several weapons.
The White House claim in 2002 regarding Pyongyang's suspected uranium activities led to the collapse of a Clinton administration program of North Korean nuclear disarmament and a years-long standoff punctuated by an October 2006 atomic test. U.S. intelligence personnel in 2007 said there was just "midconfidence" in the existence of a North Korean uranium program.
However, minute amounts of uranium turned up during an extensive scientific review of nuclear papers and smelted aluminum tubing that Pyongyang submitted in hopes of proving that it was conducting no uranium activities, administration officials told the Post. The Defense Intelligence Agency has expressed particular concern about the finding, along with some CIA officials and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, while the Energy Department has questioned the case.
The DIA argument is built on a single uranium particle that has been found to be roughly 3 1/2 years old, said Institute for Science and International Security head David Albright, citing government officials. That would indicate that the material must have originated in North Korea, rather than being brought into the country on uranium enrichment technology shipped by Pakistan more than a decade ago, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Energy Department officials were not convinced, arguing that it had not been proved that the material was not from Pakistan, Albright said. He called Hadley's statement "irresponsible and inflammatory."
"It fans the flames of controversy and hands Obama a hot potato," Albright said (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Jan. 8).
However, another analyst said Hadley's speech suggested there was proof beyond the uranium traces on the material handed to the United States, Bloomberg reported.
"My sense is that, because of what Steve Hadley said, there's probably more than that," said former Bush administration Asia specialist Michael Green. "It struck me that he used the word 'ongoing.'"
Pyongyang agreed in 2007 to dismantle its nuclear sector in exchange for a host of benefits from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The program is now in its second phase, which involves disablement of key facilities at the plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear complex. Actual dismantlement would follow in the third and final phase.
The process has become stuck again in recent months by a dispute over what would be included in the verification protocol. North Korea has denied a U.S. assertion that it agreed to allow collection of nuclear samples.
Talks last month failed to resolve the matter and it is likely to persist into the Obama administration, said State Department spokesman Robert Wood (Viola Gienger, Bloomberg, Jan. 7).
Meanwhile, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said today that diplomacy is not the answer to resolving the nuclear standoff, Agence France-Presse reported.
"I think this is a case where you have to acknowledge that North Korea is not really prepared to give up its nuclear weapons program. Diplomacy is not going to change that outcome," Bolton, who has become a harsh critic of Bush administration policy on North Korea and Iran, said during a trip to Hong Kong.
"(The North Koreans) are experts in selling the same piece of salami over and over again," he said. "They have successfully for years made commitments, violated the commitments, and yet continued the negotiation, extracting more and more benefits."
China has the ability to shut down North Korea's nuclear ambitions, according to Bolton.
"Pressure from China, cutting off the energy supply, would be the most important thing," he said.
"I think China is concerned that too much pressure will bring the North Korean regime down, and that would lead to a rapid reunification of the Korean peninsula, which China doesn't see in its interest," Bolton added. "I think that's a mistake on China's part" (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Jan. 8).