North Korea: Nuclear Defiance Without Punishment : Diplomacy: Pyongyang’s leaders have no incentive to allow inspectors in until Clinton says what he is willing to give them for compliance.

It is shaping up as Bill Clinton’s Cuban Missile Crisis. Before the dust settles, how the President manages the deepening problem of North Korea’s nucle ar-weapons program may come to define his foreign policy much as the missile crisis did for another untried Democratic President three decades ago.

Unlike the flaps over Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti, the stakes in North Korea involve fundamental U.S. interests: stability in Asia and the future of the non-proliferation regime. Though Clinton has correctly identified the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as his top national-security concern, thus far, his policy toward North Korea has been dangerously flawed. The Administration has sent mixed signals to North Korea, without a clear sense of the end-game.

In the diplomatic back-and-forth, in which loudly proclaimed “must nots” and “must not be alloweds” dominate the media hype, the basics of the North Korean nuclear problem tend to get lost. For more than a year, North Korea has thumbed its nose at the international community with impunity, threatening the credibility of both the Administration and the entire non-proliferation regime. How is this possible?

The current crisis began 15 months ago, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), after analyzing data gathered from inspections of Pyongyang’s declared nuclear facilities, discovered discrepancies between the nuclear activities North Korea admitted to and what the data revealed. Pyongyang claimed to have reprocessed only about 90 grams of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel (5 to 8 kilograms are needed for a bomb). But the IAEA’s laboratory analysis revealed that North Korea had reprocessed more than that. The IAEA also obtained satellite photos showing that North Korea had hidden from its inspectors two suspected nuclear-waste sites. Examining the sites could reveal whether North Korea, as U.S. officials suspect, has enough plutonium to make one or two bombs.

In the fall, 1992, the IAEA asked North Korea to allow its inspectors to examine the sites. When North Korea refused, the IAEA issued a formal demand. Then last March, North Korea threatened to become the first nation to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Clinton Administration, in a series of high-level meetings with Pyongyang, tried to address North Korea’s concerns of security, political legitimacy and economic assistance. Success was minimal. After meetings in June, North Korea suspended its threat to leave the treaty. This was followed by more meetings and meetings about meetings.

Since then, affairs have deteriorated. Not only has there been no progress toward gaining access to the waste sites; North Korea has also refused to allow IAEA inspectors to continue monitoring its declared nuclear program. Unless there is a break in the standoff, the ability of the international community to monitor any of North Korea’s nuclear program will soon disappear.

Defiance has cost North Korea nothing. Indeed, the United States has met with its leaders, acknowledged its security concerns, talked of providing it with light-water reactors and of even normalizing relations. If you were the aging Stalinists in Pyongyang, what would be your operative assumption about U.S. resolve?

Clinton recognizes that the incremental approach is not working. Even if North Korea allows the IAEA to monitor its declared program, the nuclear problem would be far from resolved. The Administration is devising a “package deal” for North Korea, but it must first answer two basic questions, which astonishingly, it has yet to do: What do we want, and what price are we prepared to pay to get it? That the Administration has yet to spell out what North Korea would get if it trades away its nuclear card--the only one it has--lends some legitimacy to Pyongyang’s outrageous behavior.

There are four things that should be required of North Korea to consider the nuclear issue resolved: 1) grant the IAEA full access to its facilities, particularly waste sites, and provide a sample of its reactor core when unloaded; 2) dismantle its reprocessing facility; 3) account for all plutonium (based on the IAEA’s assessment), and 4) implement the bilateral on-site challenge-inspection regime agreed to in its December, 1991, North-South denuclearization accord. These are strong demands. But the complete absence of North Korean bona fides requires intrusive inspection to attain any confidence that it is not secretly building nuclear weapons.

If these conditions are met, Washington should offer to lift its trade embargo, issue a no-first-use pledge to Pyongyang, and establish diplomatic and normal trade relations with North Korea. South Korea would offer the first installment of its contemplated economic trade and investment package, and Japan would establish diplomatic ties and initiate its own economic aid/investment program.

If North Korea refuses such a reasonable package, it is, in essence, saying that it will not trade away its nuclear program for political and economic engagement. At that point, the United States and the international community would hold the moral high ground and would have no choice but to vote for U.N. economic sanctions. To do less would unravel the non-proliferation regime and erode the Administration’s credibility.