N. Korea to Get $2 Billion in Aid Before Nuclear Inspections, U.S. Reveals

The Clinton Administration revealed Thursday that, under the agreement it recently signed with North Korea, the Pyongyang regime will get nearly $2 billion in benefits before it has to submit to special international inspections of its nuclear program.

South Korea will contribute most of the money by supplying the equipment for new nuclear reactors that will make it much harder for North Korea to make weapons-grade fuel. However, Special Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci, the Administration’s top negotiator, also estimated that the costs to the United States will be “tens of millions of dollars.”

The disclosures came at the first congressional hearing on the nuclear agreement. During the session of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia, Republicans voiced considerable unhappiness about the deal the Administration signed in Geneva in October.

“We seem to be giving up, virtually, on every front,” complained Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska). He argued that the financial benefits North Korea is to receive will serve to “prop up” the impoverished Pyongyang regime, making it less susceptible to the threat of international economic sanctions.

The Administration began negotiating with North Korea last year, after it refused to submit to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s demand to carry out special inspections of two nuclear waste sites. Those inspections could show how much weapons-grade fuel North Korea has produced.

Under the deal, North Korea does not have to submit to the special inspections for about five years--until after “a significant portion” of the work is finished on the new nuclear reactors. Gallucci said that the work will be worth nearly $2 billion. North Korea will not get any of the key components for the reactors, however, until the special inspections are carried out.

Gallucci argued repeatedly that the deal and the economic benefits to North Korea are worth the money because they stop North Korea’s fast-developing nuclear program. It is more important to prevent Pyongyang from amassing large amounts of plutonium in the future than to find out immediately what relatively small amounts were made in the past, he said.

It was unclear Thursday whether opposition is strong enough for Congress to vote to reject or modify the agreement. Some Republicans are talking about trying to pass legislation that would effectively limit the accord.

“This hearing is just the opening shot,” one senior Administration official observed. The new Congress, led by Republicans, is going to want to conduct its own hearings, the official said. “It takes some doing to explain the agreement. This is one of those situations where hearings do help us.”

Under the deal, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program now and to dismantle the program over the next decade as it receives a series of benefits from the United States and its allies.

Those benefits include steps toward diplomatic relations with the United States, immediate supplies of fuel oil and the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors to replace North Korea’s current, gas-graphite nuclear facilities.

Administration officials said the two light-water reactors that North Korea will receive, valued at $4 billion, will produce plutonium in a form that makes it more difficult to make nuclear bombs. However, one nuclear specialist, Gary Milhollan of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, testified at Thursday’s hearing that the light-water reactors being supplied to North Korea are not risk-free.

“Although light-water reactors are less efficient at producing bomb fuel, these two giant reactors could turn out at least 70 bombs’ worth of weapons-grade plutonium per year,” he said. But he also said that “under the agreement, plutonium from the light-water reactors will not be available for at least a decade, whereas more plutonium from (North Korea’s) smallest graphite reactor could be available as early as next year.”