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Meltdown on North Korea Bush-Condi Approach May Be About to Collapse
Guest Column | By Joel Himelfarb | April 28, 2008
Last
week’s political theater on Capitol Hill, where the Bush Administration
yielded to congressional pressure and broke its silence about North
Korean-Syrian nuclear weapons collaboration, was a landmark event: In
all likelihood, it was the beginning of the end of the State
Department’s efforts to “make history” with a flawed North Korea deal.
Since the February 2007 signing of an agreement in which Pyongyang
agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, Assistant Secretary of
State for East Asian Affairs Christopher Hill has tried to negotiate
concrete steps to disclose North Korea’s past nuclear activities and ensure their cessation. In exchange, the Bush Administration would work to end North Korea’s economic and diplomatic isolation, including such steps as taking the DPRK off the U.S. list of terror-supporting countries and facilitating various forms of economic assistance.
The
grand bargain is going to be difficult to sell to Congress, as
evidenced by the Bush Administration’s muddled approach to the issue of
nuclear collaboration between Pyongyang and Damascus. Initially the administration sought full disclosure of the communist government’s role in Syria’s nuclear weapons program. The centerpiece of that program, the Al Kibar facility in northeastern Syria, was destroyed in a September 6, 2007, raid by the Israeil Air Force.
But
for months, the Bush Administration has resisted providing Congress
with details of what happened at the secret Syrian complex. Finally,
after intense, bipartisan pressure from Capitol Hill, intelligence
officials agreed to brief 22 senior congressional representatives on
Thursday. The administration showed members of Congress and reporters a
video in which the CIA and other intelligence agencies make the case
that the Syrian facility could not generate civilian electricity. Al
Kibar had one purpose, an intelligence official said: “to produce
plutonium,” in all likelihood as part of a weapons program. The video
included a photograph of Chon Chibu, who oversees North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor-fuel plant, visiting Syria, where he was shown meeting with Ibrahim Othman, head of Syria’s Atomic Energy Commission. Syria went to great lengths to conceal the reactor from spy satellites. After it was destroyed by Israel,
the Syrians hid the facility and paved over the site – behavior that is
hardly consistent with the notion that the facility was “civilian” in
nature. (The full video is available at www.washingtontimes.com.)
As
more information comes out about North Korea’s proliferation activities
in Syria, it is will become increasingly difficult, if not impossible,
for Rice and Hill ( the administration’s point man in negotiations with
the Stalinist regime) to sell Congress a North Korea nuclear deal
lacking tough verification requirements. But less than two weeks ago,
Rice suggested in a briefing to reporters that taking Pyongyang
off the list of state sponsors of terror could occur before all
verification is completed. One reason why Rice is taking such a soft
stance is that she realizes that if Washington demands that North Korea
keep its promises, the agreement will likely collapse. The blunt truth
is that if Congress seriously exercises its oversight responsibilities
by demanding intrusive inspections necessary to investigate any
suspected covert weapons sight at any time without getting prior
approval from North Korean authorities, it’s probably a deal killer.
North
Korean leader Kim Jong-i’s government has agreed to permit verification
that it is shutting down its facility at Yongbyon, which produces the
plutonium contained in the Stalinist regime’s nuclear weapons. But
former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton says this
isn’t much of a concession, because Yongbyon is an aging facility
nearing the end of its useful life. Indeed, much of Christopher Hill’s
time in recent months has been spent on getting North Korea to come clean about a second program to produce atomic weapons: its covert uranium enrichment efforts.
State
Department spokesman Sean McCormack said October 17th that even if the
DPRK failed to fully account for its uranium program, the agreement
would allow inspectors access to all of North Korea’s nuclear facilities. But Bolton takes sharp issue with the State Department spokesman. “We don’t know where the facilities are. That’s totally untrue,” Bolton told The Washington Times on Wednesday when asked about McCormack’s assertion. Bolton said that in essence Washington will be forced to take Pyongyang’s
word when it comes to the location of these sites, making the North
Korean deal akin to something that Jimmy Carter would have negotiated.
North Korea
was supposed to have provided a complete declaration of its nuclear
programs by December 31st, including details of the assistance it
provided to other countries. But it failed to do so. So, earlier this
month, the State Department came up with a formula to allow the DPRK to
avoid this requirement: a choreographed arrangement in which Washington
would put forward its “concerns” about North Korea’s nuclear activities
and Pyongyang would “acknowledge the U.S. concerns.”
But there is wide, bipartisan agreement that this scheme would enable Pyongyang to evade responsibility for its actions. Retired Ambassador Jack Pritchard, a former negotiator with North Korea
who served in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, was a
relative dove. He expressed reservations about this approach. “The
concern I have is a North Korean acknowledgement of U.S.
concerns does not appear to translate into a North Korean complete and
correct declaration of their past activities,” Mr. Pritchard told
Reuters. “It doesn’t, on the surface, satisfy the requirement of
completeness….The North Koreans may simply be acknowledging what
limited amount of information the United States
but failing to [provide] the complete picture.” Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, Delaware Democrat, says Washington should not lift sanctions on Pyongyang “unless we are able to confirm that North Korea
is no longer in the nuclear proliferation business.” When people like
Biden and Pritchard are cogently suggesting that Bush Administration
policies may be too soft, it’s a sign that the president and the State
Department have lost their bearings on North Korea.
FamilySecurityMatters.org contributing editor Joel Himelfarb is the assistant editor of the editorial page of the Washington Times.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
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