Did North Korea Cheat?
by Selig S. Harrison
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005
Summary: Two years ago, Washington accused Pyongyang of
running a secret nuclear weapons program. But how much
evidence was there to back up the charge? A review of
the facts shows that the Bush administration
misrepresented and distorted the data-while ignoring the
one real threat North Korea actually poses.
Selig S. Harrison is Director of the Asia Program and
Chairman of the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy at the
Center for International Policy. He is also a Senior
Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars and the author of Korean Endgame.
www.foreignaffairs.org
[Click the title to access the article of Foreign
Affairs January February 2005]
"The U.S. government moved quickly Friday to refute a
ReplyDeleteclaim made by a leading North Korea expert that
Washington has exaggerated its intelligence on North
Korea's nuclear program as it did in the case of Iraq.
The controversy was sparked by an article set to be
published in the Dec. 17 issue of Foreign Affairs by
Selig Harrison, who is director of the Asia Program and
chairman of the Task Force on U.S.-Korean Policy at the
Center for International Policy.
"Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration
presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible
truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea
(much as it did in Iraq), seriously exaggerating the
danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based
nuclear weapons," Harrison writes in the article posted
on the journal's website.
Harrison also says the administration of President
George W. Bush has failed to provide evidence to support
the claims to China, Japan, South Korea and Russia --
its partners in the six-party talks aimed at resolving
the North Korean nuclear crisis.
U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli quickly
denied the accusations, saying, "Those claims are
wrong."
"We think there is a wealth of clear and compelling
evidence about North Korea's uranium enrichment
program," Ereli told reporters.
In October 2002, Washington said North Korean officials
had allegedly admitted to U.S. Assistant Secretary of
State for Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly that
Pyongyang was running a secret uranium enrichment
program -- a claim denied by North Korea.
The U.S. allegation increased tensions and eventually
led the six nations to launch the dialogue framework in
August 2003. Both the United States and North Korea
remain divided over the uranium issue, making it the
most contentious issue for the six-party talks in the
three rounds held so far. The talks have been stalled
since June.
Ereli said the United States had the evidence far before
the alleged North Korea admission.
"We have known since the late 1990s that North Korea was
interested in enrichment technology," he said. "We
obtained clear evidence over two and half years ago that
it was pursuing a covert program to enrich uranium, and
assess that North Korea was pursuing uranium enrichment
as an alternate route to nuclear weapons."
Ereli noted that the Central Intelligence Agency
reported to Congress at that time that North Korea had
begun seeking centrifuge-related materials in large
quantities in 2001 and was also obtaining equipment
suitable for use in uranium feed and withdrawal systems.
"We were already aware of the program before they (the
North) ever talked to us, and we informed them of our
knowledge about it in October 2002," Ereli said. "And it
was at that time North Korea acknowledged to senior U.S.
officials that it was pursuing such a covert program."
In the article, Harrison says the November 2002 CIA
report, which set forth the basis for Kelly's
confrontation, alludes to "clear evidence," but did not
explain the nature of the evidence beyond mentioning it
and presented a conclusion that North Korea was
"constructing a plant that could produce enough
weapons-grade uranium for two or more weapons per year
when fully operational, which could be as soon as
mid-decade."
While noting that the CIA says it cannot reveal all that
it knows, Harrison says, "This argument would be more
persuasive if the agency had at least made a credible
case to congressional committees in executive session or
to U.S. Asian allies."
Harrison says the Bush administration has blurred the
distinction between weapons-grade highly enriched
uranium and low-enriched uranium, which is not suitable
for weapons and is permitted by the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty if its production comes along
with international safeguard inspections.
The 2002 U.S. allegation seems to have been inspired by
"the growing alarm in Washington in the preceding five
months over the ever more conciliatory approach that
Seoul and Tokyo had been taking toward Pyongyang,"
Harrison says, adding that the United States "hoped to
scare Japan and South Korea into reversing their
policies."
In September 2002, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi made a landmark visit to Pyongyang, the first by
a prime minister, and held talks with North Korean
leader Kim Jong Il.
Harrison urges the Bush administration to reverse its
policy, warning that the danger posed by the North's
plutonium program is much greater than "the hypothetical
threat" of suspected uranium program.
He concludes that that "uranium mystery" must be
resolved in any North Korean denuclearization process.
After the 2002 incident, the United States nullified the
1994 bilateral nuclear agreement, leading North Korea to
retaliate by expelling international inspectors and
resuming plutonium reprocessing.
The 1994 accord committed Pyongyang to freeze and
eventually dismantle its plutonium-based, weapons-grade
nuclear facilities in exchange for two light-water
nuclear reactors for power generation and a stopgap fuel
supply."