INTERVIEW - North Korea still stalls UN nuclear inspections
Date: 19-Oct-01
Country: UNITED NATIONS
Author: Evelyn Leopold
"We are still where we had been a year ago. We continue to verify the freeze of the existing facilities but we haven't really made any progress with regard to verification of the past program," said Mohammed Elbaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Wednesday.
Elbaradei, in an interview, said he believed North Korea was waiting for the construction of the reactors to move past the excavation phase before it took action.
"They feel that the reactor project is not going according to schedule. It was supposed to be completed by 2003 and people are now talking about 2008," he said.
"So they feel there is no reason for them to start cooperating with us. I hope that once they get a schedule for delivery they will come to us," he said.
In 1994, the Clinton administration and North Korea worked out the "Agreed Framework" accord in which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its plutonium production program and eventually to dismantle it.
In return, Washington agreed to replace North Korea's graphite-moderated reactors with two light-water reactors, which are less useful in making bomb-grade material, to help ease the country's power shortage.
The deal, worth $5 billion, is financed by a consortium that also includes South Korea, Japan and the European Union.
One condition was that North Korea would allow the IAEA to inspect several nuclear waste sites and make sure all plutonium was under international safeguards once a "significant portion" of the reactors was completed. The United States has warned several times that work on the reactors could be halted if the inspectors continued to be barred.
"Basically we want to see how much plutonium had been produced in North Korea and make sure that it is declared to us and put under safeguards," Elbaradei said.
KEEP WEST GUESSING?
Analysts have speculated that North Korea wants to keep the West guessing about its nuclear potential and thereby maintain leverage over the Bush administration to keep the bargain.
The IAEA would need three to four years to complete its work "and I guess they still feel they can buy some time - and exert some pressure," Elbaradei said.
"So we are in a waiting phase. The ball is in their court, Elbaradei said of the dispute that began in 1991.
"It's not a good case to show respect for the nonproliferation regime," he said. "We would like to see that case come to an end as soon as we can."
Separate from the reactor project, the United States has urged North Korea to resume negotiations on missile and other issues, stalled since President George W. Bush took office in January and ordered a review of U.S. policy.
The review went beyond curbing missiles and concluded Pyongyang had to undertake a wider program to curb its military potential and North Korea has not responded.
U.S. Secretary State Colin Powell told reporters flying with him to Shanghai on Wednesday that the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States had probably slowed the North Korean decision-making process, but dire economic circumstances in the country would eventually force it to seek better relations.
"Eventually the North Koreans will respond in a way that will allow us to go forward because I don't think they have any other choice or future," Powell said. "Their economy doesn't get any better."