Opting Out: Just What Is Pyongyang Hiding? : North Korean intentions require Security Council attention

Barring a last-minute change of mind, North Korea appears to be just days away from making good on its threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the agreement entered into by 153 states to contain the spread of nuclear weapons. That precedent-setting action would leave the Stalinist regime that rules one of the world’s few communist countries more isolated than ever. But it also bodes to leave Northeast Asia more nuclear-nervous than ever, raising the prospect of the early emergence of a third regional nuclear power--after Russia and China--with all the ominous consequences for potential nuclear competition and political instability that implies.

The United States, in two high-level meetings with North Korean officials at the United Nations last week, tried to get the regime with which it fought a bitter war 40 years ago to cancel its intention to quit the NPT. Pyongyang wasn’t interested, despite several reported but unidentified concessions from Washington.

If it remains in the NPT, North Korea is obligated to allow international inspection of its nuclear facilities to verify that they are only for non-military purposes. The International Atomic Energy Agency is especially interested in two facilities that U.S. intelligence indicates may contain nuclear waste materials. The presence of such materials could indicate an undeclared weapons productions program, one which--some American officials believe--could put Pyongyang within a year or two of possessing one or more deliverable nuclear warheads. That suspicion is deepened by North Korea’s apparent decision to opt out of the NPT rather than face on-site inspections.

Additional knowledge about North Korea’s nuclear program further feeds this suspicion. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, notes in the May issue of Arms Control Today that since 1986 North Korea has been operating a gas-cooled graphite reactor that can produce up to six kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium a year. The north is also known to be building two large gas-cooled reactors using natural uranium; once finished, these reactors could produce as much as 250 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium a year. Five kilograms of plutonium--11 pounds--is all that’s needed to obliterate a good-sized target. North Korea’s nuclear intentions are not, then, of marginal importance. If Kim Il Sung and his son and anointed successor, Kim Jong Il, are indeed striving to make their impoverished country a nuclear power, there is reason for international alarm.

Saturday is the date set for North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT. Washington should seek a U.N. Security Council meeting that same day to press for a severe response. International action in the form of strong economic and diplomatic penalties clearly is necessary, first to maintain the integrity of the international nuclear inspection system, second to dissuade other nuclear-capable NPT signatories--like Iraq--from similarly renouncing the treaty. A solid consensus for taking U.N. action already seems to have formed. The challenge is to turn that consensus into a program for effective action.