The Hindu : Yet another nuclear power

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 23, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Yet another nuclear power

NORTH KOREA'S ADMISSION that it has a nuclear weapons programme — and the stated assessment of the U.S. that Pyongyang has indeed proceeded towards weaponisation — raises important questions on several fronts. Queries pertaining to the durability and effectiveness of nuclear non-proliferation mechanisms, regional stability in East Asia and the containment of states that have been placed in the "rogue" category by the superpower are some of the issues thrown up by the North Korean declaration. The U. S. administration, which will be burdened with most of the effort that will be needed to cope with Pyongyang's new posture, has bestirred itself but slowly. It is probable that Washington will initially concentrate its diplomatic campaign towards the objective of getting the nuclear genie back into the North Korean bottle, but success in real life could prove just as elusive as it is in the proverb. The U. S. and North Korea had entered into agreement in early 1994 whereby Pyongyang was to be provided with proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors and other economic incentives to induce it to give up a weaponisation effort based on the plutonium reprocessing route. It now transpires that Pyongyang has since been developing a weapons programme based on the uranium enrichment processes. Last week's admission by North Korea, issued simultaneously with a declaration that it had nullified the 1994 agreement, not only demonstrated that the provision of incentives has not worked but also augurs that the price it will demand for a rollback of its current programme will be a very heavy one.

South Korea and Japan, which have both launched initiatives towards a rapprochement with Pyongyang, have warned that this process could be placed in jeopardy but they are for the moment not contemplating measures that would vitiate the progress made thus far. They would, however, feel the need to deal with the new dimension of threat wherein Pyongyang's proclaimed capability in respect of weapons-grade nuclear material co-exists with a well-developed capacity to produce medium-range missiles. At the very least, Seoul and Tokyo would be encouraged to move deeper inside the cover provided by the shield of U.S. deterrence. On the other hand, Japan, in particular, might now feel that it needs to erect an anti-missile defence of its own thus setting off a chain-reaction of weapons development that ropes in China. With the U.S. administration, which has the best intelligence on the matter, declining to offer comment there is little to indicate Pakistan's possible role in North Korea's uranium enrichment programme other than two coincidences. The first of these is that Pakistan has a proven capability in enriching uranium to weapons grade and the second coincidence is that Islamabad's acquisition of the North Korea-originated Nodong medium range missile (re-christened the Ghauri on induction into Islamabad's armoury) took place around the time that Pyongyang is said to have launched its new nuclear programme.

Washington's reaction to the news from North Korea has been low key and probably deliberately so since the U.S. administration has reason to believe that it has multiple means at its disposal to deal with this development. However, Washington's response in this particular matter stands out in stark contrast to the manner in which it is hounding Iraq for allegedly undertaking a programme to produce weapons of mass destruction including those of the nuclear variety. Of the three countries that figured in the U.S. President, George W. Bush's now-famous "axis of evil" conceptualisation, North Korea has a declared weapons programme, Iran has at least a nuclear power programme, while Iraq (to go by what weapons inspectors have unearthed so far) has neither. Washington has, for the moment, chosen to paper over the discrepancy in its policies by declaring that Iraq and its President, Saddam Hussein, belong to a particularly roguish category within this axis because they have a history of having used chemical or biological weapons against the Iranians and their own Kurdish minority.

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