Pyongyang Deepens Suspicion : Hard to avoid conclusion it’s going nuclear

North Korea’s promise to cooperate with inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency has proven to be a sham. Frustrated IAEA inspectors have reported to their headquarters in Vienna that they were prevented from carrying out tests at a key nuclear laboratory north of Pyongyang. Those tests could have helped determine whether Kim Il Sung’s Stalinist regime is diverting plutonium from power plants to weapons production, as U.S. intelligence agencies think.

This latest instance of duplicity inevitably deepens the suspicion that the north secretly is engaged in acquiring a nuclear arsenal. On Monday the board of governors of the 120-member IAEA will meet to decide what to do next. The United States, meanwhile, has rightly chosen to cancel a planned high-level meeting with a North Korean official next week to talk about improving relations. With the north failing to demonstrate any good faith at all, it would be absurd for Washington to do otherwise. The IAEA is responsible for policing compliance with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. If it believes North Korea is cheating--and it is becoming virtually impossible to reach any other conclusion--it could refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council for action.

The sooner this is done, the better. The challenge raised by Pyongyang is not only to the United States and its allies in South Korea and Japan but to the integrity of the international treaty system, specifically the agreement to control the spread of nuclear weapons. In seeking to subvert that effort, North Korea--the only state that is a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty that has so far refused to allow full inspections--poses not just a regional but a global threat.

Getting the Security Council to respond to it as such won’t be easy. Most states, unless they perceive an immediate threat to their own interests, are more comfortable endorsing equivocation than supporting bold action. But a namby-pamby response that allows North Korea’s cheating to go unpunished seems sure to invite further assaults on the treaty. So a lot more than North Korea’s recalcitrance may be at stake here. Also to be considered is the larger threat that defiance implies for world stability.