Negotiation Can Work With North Korea
A brief recounting of historical facts shows that for the better part of two decades, stonewalling the North has consistently produced dangerous developments. Indeed, Pyongyang began acquiring the means to enrich uranium in 1997, but only after the Clinton administration was slow to live up to its end of the Agreed Framework, the U.S.-North Korean pact freezing North Korea’s nuclear effort. When the Bush administration confronted the North over enrichment in October 2002 and refused further negotiations, Pyongyang resumed its plutonium program, stepped up acquisition of enrichment equipment, and proclaimed itself a nuclear-armed state.
Yet the North has demonstrated more restraint than it is usually given credit for. Until last year, the only way for North Korea to make the fissile material it needs for nuclear weapons was to remove spent nuclear fuel from its reactor at Yongbyon and reprocess it to extract plutonium. But North Korea stopped reprocessing in 1991 — three years before signing the 1994 Agreed Framework — and did not resume it until 2003. Pursuant to a six-party accord reached in February 2007, it shut down its reactor at Yongbyon and has kept it shut since. In so doing, it has denied itself many bombs’ worth of plutonium.
Similarly, it has conducted just four sets of medium- and longer-range missile tests in twenty years. And every one of them came in direct response to disengagement by Washington or to what Pyongyang considered acts of bad faith by the United States.
In Pyongyang’s view, it was not alone in failing to live up to the six-party agreements — and it has a point. In the second-phase six-party accord, Pyongyang had pledged to provide “a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs” and to disable its plutonium facilities at Yongbyon, pending their permanent dismantlement. In return, it was promised energy aid, an end to U.S. sanctions, and removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Pyongyang provided that declaration, but, under pressure from Seoul and Tokyo, President George W. Bush delayed the delisting and sanctions easing until Pyongyang agreed to cooperate in verifying the declaration. The 2007 accord said nothing about verification, which was left to a later phase of negotiations. Yet, even after Pyongyang accepted arrangements that might have allowed the West to ascertain exactly how much plutonium North Korea had extracted in the past, Seoul, with Washington’s blessing, suspended delivery of promised fuel oil. The Obama administration continued down the same misguided course. ..read more
December 18, 2011, 12:23am
