Administration Can’t Verify N. Korea Claim

The Bush administration said Tuesday that it cannot verify North Korea’s claim to have reprocessed all 8,000 of its spent nuclear fuel rods, an action that would produce enough plutonium for about six nuclear weapons.

Senior officials said the North Koreans may be bluffing about the claim, made last week in talks between U.S. and North Korean diplomats, to try to extract concessions from the United States.

Tests for a telltale gas produced by plutonium reprocessing have been inconclusive, although intelligence agencies continue to monitor the situation, U.S. officials said.

The consensus in the intelligence community has been that the North Koreans have consistently claimed to be further along in producing nuclear weapons than they actually were, one official said.

“The point is, they’re not going to spook us,” the official said. “They’ve got to understand that they don’t get anywhere just by trying to up the level of blackmail.” The CIA has concluded that North Korea already has two nuclear weapons.

The fuel rods were stored at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which was closed in 1994 after Pyongyang agreed to end its nuclear program in return for energy assistance from Washington. It was reopened in December, after the U.S. suspended that aid upon learning that a secret uranium-enrichment program had continued.

Sources say the administration remains divided over what to do. Meanwhile, it insists that a diplomatic solution is possible -- if Pyongyang sits down with the U.S. and other nations threatened by its nuclear ambitions.

President Bush has said he wants a diplomatic solution, and the administration has been demanding that North Korea agree to verifiable, permanent dismantling of its nuclear programs in exchange for economic aid and security assurances.

At the same time, Washington and some of its allies are trying to build a consensus for the strategy of increasing pressure on Pyongyang by halting North Korean ships carrying missiles or contraband. And, two sources said, some U.S. officials want to, in effect, goad Pyongyang into lashing out and bringing on its own demise.

“People have come up with all kinds of half-baked ideas on how to raise the confrontation level, but the president has been very clear all along he wants to solve this diplomatically, and we are pursuing that course,” a senior administration official said.

Administration officials agree that North Korea’s possession of weapons-grade plutonium that it could export to the highest bidder poses an unacceptable threat to U.S. security.

“Where the consensus breaks down is what do you do about it,” one well-placed source said. “Do you allow yourself to just say there’s nothing you can do, or do you try to see if a negotiated settlement is possible, knowing they might cheat on any deal they sign up to? Or do you use the military option? Or do you combine these in some way with threats and promises of benefits?

“The president has made clear what he wants,” the source said, referring to a negotiated settlement, “and people are not fulfilling his mandate.”

L. Gordon Flake, a Korea expert and head of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs in Washington, said some hard-liners want to provoke North Korea into belligerent statements or actions that would solidify the emerging coalition of nations directly threatened by a nuclear-armed Pyongyang: South Korea, China, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Russia and Australia.

Other experts said North Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its boast to be producing nuclear weapons demand action by the United Nations.

After North Korea kicked nuclear inspectors out in December and unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in January, the International Atomic Energy Agency referred the matter to the Security Council. But Russia and China have opposed U.N. action, arguing that it would backfire.

“We need to identify and treat North Korea as a violator of [the treaty] at the U.N.,” argued Henry Sokolski, a former Reagan administration official who now runs the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. “If we’re waiting upon the Chinese before we do anything, we are also in deep trouble.”