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Quits treaty { January 10 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35614-2003Jan9.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35614-2003Jan9.html
North Korea Quits Nuclear Arms Treaty
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A01
SEOUL, Jan. 10 (Friday) -- North Korea today asserted that it was pulling out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of global efforts to halt the spread of atomic weapons, while rebuffing demands that it allow a return of U.N. inspectors to a reactor capable of producing nuclear materials that could be used to build a bomb.
In a statement released by North Korea's official news agency this afternoon, the insular Communist country claimed "freedom from the binding force of the safeguards accord with the International Atomic Energy Agency," the U.N. watchdog that monitors the 1970 treaty, which has more than 180 countries as signatories.
Although the treaty itself lays out a withdrawal process that takes 90 days, North Korea asserted that its withdrawal would take effect immediately. Some analysts suggested North Korea could use an identical announcement it made in March 1993 and later suspended to make the claim that the required 90 days had already passed.
Shortly after the announcement, a North Korean envoy to China, cited by Seoul's YTN television, said North Korea would be willing to reverse its decision if the United States and its allies resumed shipments of fuel oil. Those shipments were halted following disclosures in October that North Korea had been secretly working to enrich uranium that could be used in nuclear weapons in violation of the 1994 deal that resolved the last such crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
In its announcement, North Korea cast its actions as non-aggressive. "Though we pull out of the NPT, we have no intention to produce nuclear weapons and our nuclear activities at this stage will be confined only to peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity," it said.
The practical impact of North Korea's withdrawal from the treaty, which it joined in 1985, would be to remove its nuclear programs from the monitoring authority of the United Nations, joining states such as Israel, Pakistan and India, which have nuclear weapons but are not signatories. A North Korean withdrawal would likely complicate efforts by the IAEA to press the United Nations for sanctions or other punitive measures to force compliance, analysts said, because it would remove the country from the legal obligations of the treaty.
At the same time, the announcement seemed likely to increase the chances that the U.N. monitoring agency would try take the case to the Security Council. In an emergency meeting in Vienna on Monday, the IAEA gave North Korea a final chance to readmit its inspectors while threatening a referral to the Security Council if it failed to comply.
"North Korea is making a really dangerous move," said Moon Jung In, an expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, who serves as an informal adviser to the South Korean government. "It is quite unavoidable for the IAEA to take the case to the U.N. Security Council."
North Korea's moves escalated a tense confrontation with its neighbors and the United States, while complicating diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis through dialogue. The announcement came as North Korea sent a pair of envoys to Santa Fe for talks with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat and former U.N. ambassador, who has a history of negotiation with North Korea.
The announcement also followed a turn toward a more conciliatory stance from the Bush administration, which had previously renounced any negotiations unless North Korea first verifiably abandoned its nuclear programs and agreed to submit to inspections, but this week said it was prepared to enter into direct talks.
But analysts pronounced the apparent mixed messages from Pyongyang as consistent with a North Korean pattern of engagement with the outside in which it escalates to force the attention of its adversaries, then offers to talk while continuing the escalation to keep the pressure on.
Still, while many analysts have viewed the unfolding confrontation as North Korea's means of seeking economic aid and security assurances from the United States, some said today that its decision to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty indicated a more direct aim: its desire to safeguard its security by adding nuclear weapons to an arsenal already well-stocked with chemical, biological and conventional arms.
"They are upping the ante," said Han Sung Joo, who served as South Korea's foreign minister during the last crisis in 1994. "This makes it even more likely that one of their aims this time is to establish themselves as a nuclear power."
North Korea's move today was construed by analysts here as an embarrassing rebuke of the South Korean government, which has conducted a public and aggressive effort to persuade the Bush administration to offer North Korea security guarantees and engage the country in dialogue.
"North Korea is really slapping South Korea in the face," said Moon. "South Korea worked very hard to urge the United States to work this out through dialogue, but now they're putting the South Korean government in an extremely difficult position."
Officials in Seoul cited by the Reuters news agency said South Korea's National Security Council would convene an emergency session today to discuss the North's announcement.
The crisis stems from North Korea decision last month to revive its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which experts said could produce three to six nuclear weapons within the next five to nine months.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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