Posted on Sun, Jul. 27, 2003

Trudy Rubin | Today, diplomacy urgently needed to halt the North Korean threat
By Trudy Rubin

Here's the most bizarre twist of the Bush policy on weapons of mass destruction.

The same administration that overhyped the nuclear danger posed by Iraq is pooh-poohing the urgent North Korean nuclear threat.

Even beyond the fraudulent claims that Saddam Hussein was shopping for African uranium, the imminence of an Iraq bomb was exaggerated. Western intelligence agencies concurred that the only way Hussein could get a nuke in the near term was if he could buy plutonium, or highly enriched uranium (not low-grade Niger "yellowcake," which he would have had to reprocess). But few countries have the capacity to make bomb-grade material, and those have little incentive to sell it.

Well, guess which bankrupt country is on the verge of producing a plutonium surplus - and has every incentive to sell it to bad guys? Answer: North Korea. But President Bush dismisses Pyongyang's recent announcement of its imminent nuclear arsenal as "nothing new."

Why is the President at such pains to play down the threat from North Korea? Because the administration doesn't have a coherent policy to deal with it.

Bush has said publicly that he "loathes" North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, whom he included in his "axis of evil." The administration that got rid of Hussein clearly would like to see "regime change" in Pyongyang. Kim knows this (he reportedly hid for 40 days during the Iraq war), which is exactly why he is accelerating his nuclear program.

But "regime change" isn't in the cards. No matter how despotic the regime, a U.S. war with North Korea would make the Iraq war look like a picnic. U.S. forces would win, but not before the huge North Korean military wreaked havoc - and massive casualties - upon South Korea's cities and army as well as the 37,000 American troops based there.

Yet administration hard-liners can't seem to resolve the contradiction between their desire - to see Kim gone - and their need to prevent North Korea from accumulating a nuclear arsenal. Only negotiations can achieve the latter. But U.S. officials keep insisting they won't give in to North Korean "blackmail." They have rejected Pyongyang's call for direct talks, as well as its demand that Washington sign a nonaggression pact before the North Koreans will give up their nuclear ambitions.

Two years of Bush dithering on whether to bargain with North Korea has made the situation only more dangerous. In the absence of dialogue, North Korea has junked its 1994 accord with Washington that froze its plutonium program. It has restarted its plutonium reactor and claims to have reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that had been stored under the agreement and that could now provide material for six to eight bombs.

Administration hard-liners insist that tougher economic sanctions will bring Pyongyang around. Yet U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, a Republican defense hawk who led a bipartisan delegation to Pyongyang last month, believes sanctions will have the opposite effect.

"Sanctions didn't work with Cuba or Iraq, and they won't work with North Korea," said Weldon: If pressed, Kim Jong Il would starve his people in outlying areas of the country but would reinforce his military. To earn more cash, Kim would turn to "more drug production, more sale of... missiles and Scuds."

Added Weldon, if Kim were in an economic bind, chances would soar that "North Korea would sell a nuclear weapon." It takes only a ball of plutonium the size of a grapefruit to make a nuclear bomb, which makes mush of administration claims that such smuggling can be interdicted.

Weldon has given the CIA uncorroborated information from an Iranian-born informant that Iran sent representatives to Pyongyang three times within the last 6 to 12 months to inquire about buying nuclear weapons. Whether or not this proves true, an unchecked North Korean nuclear program will surely attract would-be buyers.

Former Defense Secretary William Perry told The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last week: "There are plenty of bidders out there... . If any of the terror groups... are able to get that plutonium, then we could see it end up in an American city." Perry said North Korea would soon have enough nuclear weapons to target South Korea and Japan as well.

Yet Weldon, who has accumulated extensive expertise on North Korea, believes there is an approach that could resolve the crisis. He thinks the time for exploring this approach is now, in the "weeks or months" before North Korea starts making new bombs.

"I don't like Kim Jong Il any more than President Bush [does]," he said, "but we can't move toward aggression without a major effort at testing the North Koreans."

At the heart of Weldon's 10-point plan is a trade: The United States would enter into a one-year nonaggression pact with North Korea, in return for North Korea's renunciation of its nuclear program - and full and unimpeded inspection of its nuclear facilities. Weldon said senior North Korean officials showed interest in such a deal.

If there were any doubts about North Korean transparency on inspections, "all bets would be off," Weldon said. No one would trust Pyongyang's word, only facts on the ground. If the United States was satisfied, the pact would become permanent and North Korea's nuclear arsenal would be removed.

This means the North Korean regime would survive. Will administration officials countenance this idea or continue to stand on axis-of-evil principle at the risk of making nukes available to terrorists?

One clue may be how the administration treats the Weldon approach and any future efforts. Senior Bush officials tried to block his Pyongyang trip in June. Will they encourage him now?


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Contact columnist Trudy Rubin at 215-854-5823 or trubin@phillynews.com.