Trust, Maybe--but Do Verify : N. Korean deal is promising, but inconclusive

After 16 months of complex and frustrating negotiations the United States has struck a deal with North Korea that, if Pyongyang does what it seems to have committed itself to doing, could in time eliminate the budding nuclear threat in Northeast Asia.

Harsh experience, however, demands that the uncertainty implied by that “if” be emphasized. North Korea under Kim Il Sung was routinely contemptuous of such basic conventions of international behavior as keeping one’s promises. Whether things will change under the apparent new leader, Kim Jong Il, has yet to be shown. At a minimum, it would be premature to see the accord that’s to be signed in Geneva on Friday as anything more than a possible hopeful departure.

The plan calls for North Korea to freeze its nuclear program. Then over a period of up to a decade it will swap its nuclear reactors--one operational, two under construction--for oil to revive its largely moribund industries and for two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors. Reactors of this kind are far less capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium than the reactors North Korea would discard. South Korea and Japan are expected to cover most of their $4-billion cost. The oil will come from the United States and other sources.

Only toward the very end of the phased exchange process would North Korea yield control over the 8,000 nuclear fuel rods it has been holding in storage. Those rods contain material that could be processed for weapons; earlier reprocessing may already have given Pyongyang one or two nuclear devices. The International Atomic Energy Agency is supposed to have full access to North Korea’s nuclear facilities. In the past, however, IAEA inspectors were denied entry to several suspect sites.

Robert Gallucci, the chief U.S. negotiator with North Korea, insists that adequate inspection and verification procedures are built into the agreement. But the text of the accord has yet to be published, and some serious doubts and questions have been raised.

North Korea, when all is said and done, will retain possession of nuclear material for many years to come. For at least five years it can continue to deny inspectors entry to a number of sites that have figured in its efforts to divert material from spent fuel rods to weapons use. Meanwhile, it will soon begin getting the oil it so desperately needs and a start on two modern reactors.

Does all this signal a North Korean shift to moderation and true international cooperation? Certainly that’s the implicit promise. But North Korea’s promises by themselves are without value. The proof of its intentions and its trustworthiness can come only from its deeds.