Washington Rejects North Korea’s Bid to Exclude Japan

The United States yesterday rejected North Korea’s demand that Japan be excluded from future talks on the Korean nuclear crisis (see GSN, Oct. 7).

“We agree with the Japanese in rejecting the North Korean attempt to exclude Japanese participation in the multiparty talks,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.  “Japan clearly must and will continue to be a participant in the six-party talks in order to achieve a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s nuclear programs,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 8).

Speaking at a summit in Indonesia, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun also supported Japanese involvement.

“The North Korean nuclear crisis is a grave issue that can affect all of Northeast Asia, and thus Japan’s participation is needed to seek a comprehensive resolution to the issue,” Roh said.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also participated in the summit (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, Oct. 8).

Analysts dismissed North Korea’s demand as a negotiating tactic and a attempt to send a message to Japan.

“It’s basically gamesmanship.  They know they have to let Japan in and that will be the eventual outcome,” said Stuart Harris, a Northeast Asia expert from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University.  “I think they are just a bit irritated with Japan for bringing up bilateral issues and this is their usual unsubtle way of telling Tokyo to back off,” he added.

Joseph Cheung, a political analyst at the City University in Hong Kong, said the move could be designed to put pressure on China after indications the United States might be willing to accept North Korean refugees from Beijing.

“One of the tactics they have consistently used is to create confusion.  I think this demand is also meant to put pressure in China, the hosts, which has a lot riding on the success of these talks,” he said (Martin Parry, Agence France-Presse, Oct. 8).

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U.S. Air Force Planning Upgrades to Strategic Bomber Fleet

The U.S. Air Force is considering several modifications to the U.S. B-1 nuclear-capable bomber fleet, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, July 14).

One possible modification is an upgrade of the bomber’s communication system, which could be conducted through a contract worth as much as $1.5 billion, according to the Times.  Air Force officials are also considering upgrades to the B-1’s engines that would double the bomber’s speed.

Already, more than $2 billion have been spent on the B-1 fleet to convert the bomber for use in conventional missions, according to the Times.  During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the B-1 was credited with dropping more precision munitions than any other U.S. aircraft.

In addition, during an exercise last month a modified B-2 nuclear-capable bomber simultaneously dropped 80 satellite-guided munitions on 80 separate targets, the Times reported (see GSN, July 11).  All 80 bombs hit their targets, according to the Air Force, the first time that so many bombs hit so many targets at once (Peter Pae, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 8).

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Iran Gives IAEA List of Imported Nuclear Equipment

Tehran has submitted some new information about its imported nuclear equipment to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a senior Iranian official said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 6).

“We have already given a list of imported parts that were bought through intermediaries, and we are in the process of finishing this list,” said Iranian IAEA representative Ali Akbar Salehi.

IAEA inspectors have discovered traces of enriched uranium on nuclear equipment, but Iran claims the equipment was already tainted when it was brought into the country (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 6).

A team of IAEA inspectors began a series of inspections Friday, shortly after reaching an agreement with Iranian officials on a list of eligible sites.  The inspectors did not disclose if they were granted access to all the sites they wished to examine (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News II, Oct. 6).

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said today that Iran has no intention of pulling out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, as some hard-line Iranian clerics have advocated.

“We are currently negotiating with the IAEA so that our rights are not held up for ridicule and so that nobody infringes our country’s prestige,” he said.  “We have nothing to fear from inspections.  When one has nothing to hide, one has no reason to worry,” Kharazi added (Stefan Smith, Agence France-Presse, Oct. 7).

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Brazil Announces Uranium Enrichment Plans

Brazil will begin enriching uranium in 2004 for its civilian nuclear energy program and could possibly export uranium in coming years, Brazilian Science and Technology Minister Roberto Amaral said Monday (see GSN, Jan. 14).

The United States and Argentina are likely to be concerned about the Brazilian move and Brasilia’s nuclear program, Reuters reported.

The decision was endorsed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, according to Amaral.

“This is something that could not be decided against the president’s will,” Amaral said.

If Brazil begins enrichment it could potentially produce a nuclear weapon, but a presidential spokesman said the country’s nuclear research is “solely and exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

In the 1980s, Brazilian officials announced that they had the capability to enrich uranium, but they have not done so to date.  By 2014, Brazil wants to produce enough uranium for the country’s two nuclear power plants and export the surplus, according to Amaral (Reuters/Forbes, Oct. 6).

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North Korea Rejects Japanese Participation in Nuclear Talks

North Korea today said it would not agree to future multilateral talks that include Japan and accused Japanese leaders of exploiting the nuclear crisis negotiations for political or financial gain (see GSN, Oct. 6).

“A spokesman for the D.P.R.K. Foreign Ministry said in a statement today that the D.P.R.K. would not allow Japan to participate in any form of negotiations for the settlement of the nuclear issue in the future,” according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea also accused Japanese officials of harboring “black-hearted intention.”

Pyongyang is reportedly angry that Tokyo wants to discuss the issue of kidnapped Japanese citizens.  North Korea has admitted to kidnapping Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s.

Japan has refused to exclude the issue from the talks.

“The nuclear issue is not a bilateral issue between Japan and North Korea, but is of serious consequence to the region and the international community,” said Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima.  “We do not accept any notion that a certain country in the six-party talks can be banned by any other party.  The six-party talks are formed with the participation of those countries that are gravely concerned with the issue,” Takashima added (Martin Nesirky, Reuters/Washington Post, Oct. 7).

Pyongyang said Japan is no longer “a trusty dialogue partner.”

Chinese, Japanese and South Korea officials met today at an Indonesian regional forum and agreed to continue to cooperate on the Korean nuclear crisis (BBC.com, Oct. 7).

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Former U.S. Official Alleges Lax Security at Nuclear Weapons Labs

A former U.S. security tester accused the nation’s nuclear weapons laboratories of pervasive security lapses, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Sept. 23, 2002).

“Some of the facilities would fail year after year,” said Rich Levernier, who spent six years running war games for the United States and was quoted in a Vanity Fair article.  “In more than 50 percent of our tests at the Los Alamos facility, we got in, captured the plutonium, got out again, and in some cases didn’t fire a shot, because we didn’t encounter any guards,” he added.

National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Anson Franklin denied the allegations yesterday and said that the Energy Department has increased its security measures.

“Allegations of a 50-percent failure rate in security tests are simply untrue,” Franklin said.

The Vanity Fair article also said that Levernier, a 22-year employee at the Energy Department, was stripped of his security clearance in 2001 after raising security concerns.  Franklin also denied these allegations (Associated Press/Washington Post, Oct. 7).

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Iran Agrees to Disclose Some Nuclear Information, but Refuses to Recognize IAEA Deadline

Iran agreed this weekend to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency with information on the origin of some of its uranium enrichment technology, but Tehran does not consider itself bound by an Oct. 31 agency deadline, according to reports (see GSN, Oct. 3).

“This date of Oct. 31 is not a criteria for us, because we have not accepted this resolution,” said Iranian IAEA representative Ali Akbar Salehi.  “We will continue to cooperate with the IAEA and will try to make it so that the answers to outstanding issues will be given as quickly as possible,” he added.

Senior IAEA officials are currently in Tehran urging Iranian leaders to adopt the Additional Protocol to Iran’s nuclear safeguards agreement, which would allow more intrusive monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities. 

“Up to now, everything is going well,” Salehi said of the discussions (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 5).

“The train has started to move, and we have agreed to push the train to move faster,” Salehi said.  “The two sides reached total agreement,” he added.

Tehran has agreed to provide the agency with a list of imported nuclear equipment that Iranian officials say was exposed to uranium before Iran received it, the Associated Press reported.  IAEA inspectors have twice discovered evidence of enriched uranium in Iran, but Tehran claims the traces were already present when Iran acquired the equipment (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press/Chicago Tribune, Oct. 5).

“We will give them (the IAEA) a list of the items and we will show them where they were stored because they were stored in a number of places,” Salehi said.  It was not clear, however, if IAEA officials would be told where the nuclear equipment originated.

“These are items which were not bought officially, they were bought through intermediaries and it is not possible to trace intermediaries,” according to Salehi (Paul Hughes, Reuters/Wired News, Oct. 6).

IAEA Deputy Director General Pierre Goldschmidt, the most senior official on the trip, returned to Vienna recently as the first phase of the talks concluded but other agency officials remain in Tehran to continue the meetings (Jim Muir, BBC News, Oct. 4).

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North Korea Resumes Reactor Construction

North Korea has restarted construction of a 50-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, the South Korean newspaper Choson Ilbo reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 3).

Construction on the reactor had been suspended after 1994 Agreed Framework between Washington and Pyongyang, but South Korean and U.S. intelligence sources in September reported trucks, personnel and equipment traveling to the reactor site, according to a diplomatic source in Seoul.

North Korea recently claimed to have extracted plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that had been irradiated in a five-megawatt reactor and stored since 1994.  If the larger reactor comes on line, it could produce 50 kilograms of plutonium annually, enough for 10 nuclear weapons, experts said.

“The U.S. intelligence authorities tentatively assess that North Korea’s reconstruction of the 50-megawatt nuclear reactor does not constitute an ‘imminent threat,’” the diplomatic source said, adding that “it will take some time to remove rust and do other things to resume the construction, which has been suspended for 10 years” (Kwon Kyong-pok, Choson Ilbo/BBC Monitoring, Oct. 5).

KEDO Reactor Program Likely to Be Suspended

Meanwhile, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization will probably suspend construction on two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea, according to the KEDO’s top official.  KEDO is run by South Korea, Japan, the United States and the European Union, with a $1.4 billion investment to date.

“All four governments have worked mightily to find consensus where it exists, but it isn’t always there,” said KEDO Executive Director Charles Kartman.

“Suspension is something that I expect the governments eventually to decide to do,” he said, adding, “It makes a lot of sense given all of the uncertainties” (Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 6).

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Indian Establishes Redundant Nuclear Command-And-Control Centers

India’s nuclear command-and-control structure includes alternate command centers, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 22).

“We have established more than one (nuclear control) nerve center,” he said.

Any country armed with nuclear weapons has to establish a credible “second-strike” capability and nuclear command centers, Fernandes said.  “India as a declared nuclear weapons state has been on this job from day one,” he said.

India has also worked to protect governmental centers, such as Parliament, from attack, Fernandes said.  “All necessary steps to provide these vital places protection have been taken,” he said (Dhar/Chatterjee, Press Trust of India/Rediff.com, Oct. 6).

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U.S. Nuclear Power Plant to Begin Tritium Production

A civilian nuclear power plant in Tennessee is scheduled this month to begin producing tritium, a hydrogen isotope used in nuclear weapons, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Oct. 9, 2002).

Since early last month, Tennessee Valley authority workers have been installing tritium-producing fuel rods into the Watts Bar nuclear reactor during refueling, AP reported.  The plant is scheduled to resume operation this month.

TVA is set to receive about $10 million per year to produce up to 3 kilograms of tritium each year over the next 40 years, TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough said, adding that TVA will not make a profit through the agreement.

“TVA is committed to a safe, secure nation,” McCullough said.  “And the production of tritium will enhance national security,” he said.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.), however, have tried to block tritium production at the Watts Bar plant, according to AP.  They had argued that using a civilian nuclear facility to produce weapons components destroyed the nonproliferation principle of “separation between atoms for peace and atoms for war” (Duncan Mansfield, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 6).

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U.S. Energy Bill Provision Could Ease HEU Export Restrictions

A provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2003, currently being debated within the U.S. Congress, would eliminate U.S. restrictions on the export of weapon-grade uranium to five countries for medical isotope production, the Washington Post reported Saturday (see GSN, April 2).

Currently, the United States can only export weapon-grade uranium to isotope manufacturers who have pledged to eventually use low-enriched uranium, according to the Post.  The energy act provision, however, would allow two isotope manufacturers based in Missouri and Canada to indefinitely continue to receive weapon-grade uranium.

The provision was placed into the energy bill at the request of Senator Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) and Representative Richard Burr (R-N.C.) after lobbying by Mallinckrodt Inc., based in St. Louis, and MDS Nordion, based in Canada, congressional aides said.  While both Bond and Burr have received campaign donations from supporters of the provision, their aides have said such donations had no effect on their sponsorship, the Post reported.

“Current law may soon force cancer patients to pay much more for, and may even interrupt supply of, nuclear medicines,” said a memorandum circulated by Bond.

The provision has come under fire, however, from a large array of opponents, according to the Post.  In a letter to Congress, representatives of eight nuclear policy and arms control groups, two former Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners and a member of the Defense Policy Board criticized the provision. 

Experts have warned that, while the export of weapons-grade uranium to Canada poses little proliferation risk, the provision could encourage other countries to continue to use such material in their medical isotope production.

“I’m worried about the terrorist threat everywhere.  If we make an exception for Canada, then Russia can make an exception in Vietnam or Germany,” said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nonproliferation Project (R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, Oct. 4).

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Putin’s ICBM Announcement Not Aggressive, Defense Minister Says

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has said that President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Russia possesses a reserve supply of SS-19 ICBMs was not meant to be aggressive, ITAR-Tass reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 24).

Putin’s announcement “refutes rumors about Russia’s nuclear missiles being in a critical condition, or that they are antiquated and their guidance systems make them a threat to ourselves,” Ivanov said.  “I can’t see anything aggressive in the president’s announcement that Russia has such missiles,” he said (ITAR-Tass/BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Oct. 5).

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Former Iranian President Lays Out Conditions for Nuclear Cooperation

Powerful former Iranian President Akbar Rafsanjani today said Tehran must receive international assistance for its civilian nuclear program in exchange for increased Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (see GSN, Oct. 2).

Speaking during weekly Friday prayers, Rafsanjani laid out four conditions — including nuclear assistance — that must be met before Iran signs the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement and allows more intrusive international monitoring of its nuclear activities.

“The conditions we would impose for signing the protocol are the same as those imposed by the United States,” Rafsanjani said.  Tehran will insist, he said, “that our national security not be endangered, that our (Islamic) values and our sacred sites not be affected, that (military) secrets unconnected with the nuclear program not be revealed and that others fulfill their duty” to assist with Iran’s civilian nuclear plant development (Agence France-Presse, Oct. 3).

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, meanwhile, said that Iran would cooperate with the IAEA.  The U.N. agency recently imposed an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons.

“Tehran will continue its cooperation with the agency although the International Atomic Energy Agency issued an inappropriate resolution because Iran doesn’t have any worries regarding the transparency of its peaceful nuclear program,” Khatami said yesterday.  “Nuclear weapons will not be a source of security for us,” he added (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, Oct. 3).

Iranian nuclear officials began meetings recently with senior IAEA representatives in Tehran (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

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Failure to Negotiate With North Korea Will Lead to Asian Nuclear Proliferation, Senator Says

By George C. Wilson

National Journal

It was a memorable Washington moment.  It came right after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee finished grilling President George W. Bush’s man in Iraq, Paul Bremer, last week.  A 20-something woman walked from the spectator seats in the cavernous hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building to the dais to lay her concerns about Iraq on Bremer’s chief griller, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the committee’s ranking Democrat.  Biden listened attentively to the young woman for several minutes as the room emptied.  He then took her aback by skipping right over Iraq and telling her that she and others in her generation had something more menacing to worry about — the accelerating nuclear arms race in the Far East.

The 60-year-old Biden told me later that he could not help feeling gloomy as he looked at the trusting woman and realized that his generation of leaders was bequeathing to her a world more dangerous than the one they grew up in.  They had only one nuclear gun pointed at them, the Soviet Union’s, during the Cold War.  In addition, it wasn’t always on hair trigger.  But as things stand right now, the usually buoyant Biden said sadly, that young lady and others in her generation soon will be looking down the barrel of half a dozen nuclear guns, many on hair trigger, because President Bush has not found a way to stop North Korea from starting a nuclear arms race in the Far East.

“Things are unraveling on the Korean Peninsula,” Biden said in explaining his pessimism in a lengthy interview.  The North Koreans are proceeding with their manufacture of nuclear bombs (see GSN, Oct. 2).  “If they haven’t already reprocessed those 8,000 spent fuel rods” taken out of storage in January at their nuclear facility at Yongbyon to make plutonium for bombs, “they’re on the verge of doing it.”  This will set off a chain reaction, he warned, compelling Japan to field its own nuclear weapons “within two years.  Then South Korea will become a nuclear power” (see GSN, Aug. 11).  China, confronted on its eastern front with a nuclear North Korea, a nuclear Japan, and possibly a nuclear Taiwan, “will go ballistic, literally and figuratively.”

The Chinese, Biden continued, are going to conclude that they’re really in a very different neighborhood than they were before.  “They’re going to say, ‘We only had to look south at India before in worrying about nukes.  That’s why we helped Pakistan with its nuclear program.  So India is not our greatest concern right now.  But now we have to vastly increase our nuclear capability.’”

China has less than two dozen nukes now, mainly aimed at U.S. cities, and these weapons are designed mainly to deter an American attack.  “They are really for defensive purposes,” Biden said.  But if China’s old enemy Japan goes nuclear, as it surely will if North Korea continues on its present course, China will feel compelled to develop and deploy hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nuclear weapons to deter Japan and the other new nuclear powers in the neighborhood, Biden contended.  Nor can Indonesia be expected to sit out the nuclear race in the Far East as the action-reaction phenomenon takes hold.

The senator’s gloom cannot simply be dismissed as “the-sky-is-falling” rhetoric from a liberal whose party is out of power.  Biden has spent most of his adult life trying to keep nuclear scorpions around the world from striking each other.  He has held forth not only in open Senate hearings and debates but also in private meetings with presidents and diplomats around the world.  Besides, others who have been down the road of confrontation with Pyongyang share his worries about North Korea triggering an arms race and potentially a nuclear war.  Most notable among them is former Defense Secretary William Perry, who readied the military for all-out war with North Korea in 1994 even while helping the Clinton administration to craft an accord with Pyongyang designed to freeze the country’s nuclear advance.

“If it keeps on its present course,” Perry wrote in the Washington Post on July 23, “North Korea will probably have six to eight nuclear weapons by the end of the year; will possibly have conducted a nuclear test; and may have begun deployment of some of these weapons targeted against Japan and South Korea.  By next year, it could be in serial production of nuclear weapons, building perhaps five to 10 per year.  Given North Korea’s desperate economic condition, we should expect it to sell some of the products of its nuclear program, just as it did with its missile program (see GSN, April 25).  If that happens, a nuclear bomb could end up in an American city.  The administration has suggested that it would interdict such transfers.  But a nuclear bomb can be made with a sphere of plutonium the size of a soccer ball,” wrote Perry.  “It is wishful thinking to believe we could prevent a package of that size from being smuggled out of North Korea.”

So how do we stop this locomotive that has gotten up so much steam?

Biden and Perry see no acceptable alternative to Bush’s conducting serious and direct negotiations with North Korea.  Diplomatic officials say that the ones to date, conducted with Pyongyang under the umbrella of multilateral talks with China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, have been less than halfhearted (see GSN, Sept. 2).  One diplomat in the know said that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs John Kelly, Bush’s negotiator in the multination talks, brought nothing to the table for North Korea in the most recent round.  Kelly also infuriated the North Koreans by refusing to host a dinner for them, as they had done for us, the diplomat added.

Biden said despairingly that the neoconservatives around Bush, notably Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are viscerally opposed to duplicating anything former President Bill Clinton did, such as negotiating a pact with North Korea.  They consider negotiations with rogue leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Il a sign of weakness, the senator said.

“My instinct,” said Biden, “is that the ‘hate-Clinton’ attitude is 75 percent of the reason the Bush administration is not negotiating seriously with North Korea, and 25 percent is [the belief] that you cannot negotiate with this guy and if you’re strong enough and tough enough, he’ll yield.”  Secretary of State Colin Powell realizes that the United States, no matter how strong it is, cannot just stiff-arm countries, Biden said.  Powell periodically talks Bush into negotiating, as he did with North Korea, but Cheney keeps pulling him back.  “Like with a horse, Powell is always able to lead Bush to the water.  But just as he is about to put his head down, Cheney up in the saddle says, ‘Un-uh,’ and yanks up the reins before Bush can drink the water.  That’s my image of how it goes,” Biden said.

Everybody knows, Biden said, that the only way the United States can get North Korea to halt its nuclear march is to, “at a minimum, assure the North Koreans that we will not remove [Kim Jong Il’s regime] from power.  But what would that do to the neocons in the administration?  They would have to swallow 20 years of their tripe that they would never do that.”

According to author Bob Woodward in Bush at War, the president said, “I loathe Kim Jong Il.  I’ve got a visceral reaction to this guy because he is starving his people.  And I have seen intelligence on these prison camps — they’re huge — that he uses to break up families and to torture people.  I am appalled.  ... It is visceral.  Maybe it’s my religion, but I feel passionate about this.”

This moralist mind-set at the top of the American government, Biden said, is why he feels gloomier about the prospect of avoiding nuclear war, particularly in the Far East, than at any time since he came to Congress three decades ago.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney are among the conservatives who share Biden’s sense of alarm about North Korea’s touching off a nuclear arms race.  But they disagree that Washington can negotiate an agreement that Pyongyang will honor.  “We see no alternative but for China to use its substantial economic leverage, derived from North Korea’s dependence on it for fuel and food, to press hard and immediately for a change in regime,” they wrote in the August 4 Wall Street Journal.  “Kim Jong Il’s regime has shown that agreements signed with it, by anyone, mean nothing.”

If China fails to effect regime change, the United States should be prepared to do it through a war featuring “massive air power,” Woolsey and McInerney said.  They contend that precision bombs could destroy the thousands of North Korean artillery tubes, many in caves, before the guns could kill thousands of South Korean civilians.  Biden and others, however, do not share that belief.  The neocons of this view “are the same guys who would have been telling [President] Eisenhower that he had to use a nuclear weapon against China” to win the Korean War, Biden scoffed.  “Can you imagine the Cold War ending the way it did if these guys were in charge?”

Biden was arguing his liberal ideology.  But Perry was not arguing ideology when he studied, at Clinton’s request, what to do about North Korea’s emerging nuclear arsenal in the 1990s.  Perry’s background and interests were first and foremost technical, not political.  As Pentagon research chief under President Carter from 1977 to 1981, Perry championed the initial development of the precision weapons that we so rely on today.  He told me back then that he could not get military leaders to see their advantages, to trust them.  He sounded as discouraged about this mind-set on the technical front as Biden does now on the diplomatic front.

More than a decade later, Perry, as defense secretary, analyzed whether precision munitions and other weaponry could derail North Korea’s nuclear program at a cost the world would accept, not condemn.  In contrast to the antiseptic war outlined by Woolsey and McInerney, Perry concluded that a war with North Korea — precision weapons notwithstanding — would be unacceptably bloody, especially for the South Koreans.  He recommended negotiations instead.  He is recommending them again today, with the very same Pyongyang government that later double-crossed him by eventually starting a separate nuclear program to enrich uranium.  Perry is holding his nose and saying, “The only reason for considering negotiations with North Korea is that the other alternatives are so terrible.”

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North Korea Claims to Solve Nuclear Technology Obstacle

North Korea today announced that it had overcome key obstacles in its attempt to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons (see GSN, Oct. 2).

“All the technological matters have been solved fully in the process of making a switchover in the use of plutonium,” according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The announcement comes on the heels of belligerent North Korean statements yesterday, in which officials promised to build the nation’s nuclear deterrent (Sang-hun Choe, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said today that the last round of six-nation talks in Beijing had produced a mutual agreement not to escalate the nuclear crisis, an arrangement that North Korea is now apparently ignoring.

Japan called the recent announcements from Pyongyang “lamentable” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also voiced concern about the North Korean statements.

“I think clearly the American people need to be concerned about North Korea,” he said.  “I think anyone who listens to all of the things that come out of that country and registers them has to be concerned about what one’s hearing,” Rumsfeld added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

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Putin Says Moscow Retains Effective Nuclear Deterrent

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia can maintain its long-range nuclear deterrent well into the future (see GSN, Oct. 2).

In a meeting with senior military officials, Putin said Russia has several dozen SS-19 missiles that have been stored without fuel and “in that sense are new.”  Liquid missile fuel breaks down over time and can damage a missile, the Associated Press reported.

“Their capability, in particular in the sense of their ability to penetrate any missile defense systems, is unparalleled,” Putin said of the SS-19 missiles.  He described the missiles as “the most menacing” in Moscow’s stockpile.

The comments were apparently designed to assuage fears that Russia’s aging Soviet arsenal will soon fall behind that of the United States, according to AP.

“Thus, we have enough time to develop new types of weapons of the 21st century without rush,” Putin said (Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press/Rocky Mount Telegram, Oct. 2).

The missiles can remain in service until the 2030s, deputy chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky told the meeting.

Analysts, however, expressed some skepticism on the recent statements.  Putin’s announcement, and a recent warning to NATO, could be aimed toward Russian voters ahead of State Duma elections, according to Alexander Pikayev, a security analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center (Simon Saradzhyan, Moscow Times, Oct. 3).

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IAEA Begins Nuclear Talks With Senior Iranian Officials

Two senior International Atomic Energy Agency officials began talks with Iranian authorities today in an attempt to resolve questions about Tehran’s controversial nuclear development before the U.N.-mandated Oct. 31 deadline (see GSN, Oct. 1).

The United Nations has called on Iran to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons and to open itself to intrusive, unannounced inspections of it nuclear activities.

“The talks began at 10 a.m. under an atmosphere of understanding.  The talks are very important and vital for both sides,” said Saber Zaimian, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

He said the talks could take “between one to three weeks depending on the progress of the negotiations.”

“We were invited by Mr. Vice President (Gholamreza) Aghazadeh, so I expect that he has a very important message for us and (that we will) progress very rapidly,” Deputy IAEA Director General Pierre Goldschmidt, one of the IAEA officials who traveled to Tehran, said.

 “We have only a few weeks to progress and report to the next board, so I expect we are going to make great progress,” he added (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press, Oct. 2).

“We’re going to start very important discussions with top officials from Iran,” Goldschmidt said.

Iranian IAEA Ambassador Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran would not delay nuclear development while negotiations continued.

“For the time being we will continue enriching uranium,” Salehi said yesterday (Reuters/Jordan Times, Oct. 2).

Tehran, meanwhile, named a five-member panel to determine a policy toward the U.N. deadline.  Panel members include Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani, Information Minister Ali Yunessi, secretary for the high national security council Hassan Rowhani and Ali Velayati, the international affairs adviser to the supreme religious leader (New York Times, Oct. 2).

Some Iranian officials, meanwhile, seemed anxious to settle the issue before it is sent to the U.N. Security Council.

Iran is working toward “providing the necessary clarifications and taking the appropriate decisions to prevent this matter from going before the Security Council,” Kharrazi said.  In a later appearance on Iranian television, however, Kharrazi said it would be pointless to allow inimpeded inspections if Iran were not allowed to enrich uranium (Chicago Tribune, Oct. 2).

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Regional Approach to Middle East Arms Promoted

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON ó As the United States continues its as-yet-unsuccessful search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board confronts Iran about its alleged nuclear weapon ambitions, calls have been going up for a comprehensive regional approach to the Middle East strategic landscape.

Iran, Israel’s Arab neighbors and others repeatedly cite nuclear-armed Israel as their main strategic foil.  At IAEA conferences and other international gatherings, they have been pushing for a Middle East nuclear weapon-free zone and for interim measures to build confidence among the region’s countries.

Former Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority head Fawzi Hammad, among others, has seized on recent developments in Iraq and Iran as a chance to renew the push for some eventual broad-based solution to Middle Eastern strategic instability.

“It definitely has to happen,” Bruce Jentleson, director of Duke University’s Sanford Institute of Public Policy, said this week.

“Resolving the bilateral issues is the first set of issues, and it’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient for regional security,” said Jentleson, whose scholarship has in the past focused on the now-stalled Arms Control and Regional Security process in the Middle East.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Associate Rose Gottemoeller, a former top U.S. nonproliferation official who recently visited Tehran as part of an expert group, said there has been a revival of interest in a regional process.

“There is a lot of interest regionally in how … we get back, at a minimum, into a consultative process,” said Gottemoeller.

Modest Steps Sought Amid Slow Going at IAEA

At the IAEA, there is little sign that convening regional talks is feasible in the near future.  The Arab League last month obtained passage of the latest in a series of IAEA General Conference resolutions calling for such a Middle East nuclear weapon-free zone, with agency members asking IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei to continue consultations with the region’s countries on early application of IAEA safeguards “as a necessary step towards the establishment of a NWFZ.”

The resolution appeared to be a step back from last year’s version, in which countries asked ElBaradei to “make arrangements to convene a forum in which participants from the Middle East and other interested parties could learn from the experience of other regions” that have established nuclear weapon-free zones.  ElBaradei reported in August that fundamental Israeli-Arab differences had prevented progress on the matter, and the call for a forum was absent from this year’s resolution.

“The positions of the two sides are poles apart. … There’s been no closing of the gap,” said Tariq Rauf, head of verification and security policy coordination in ElBaradei’s external relations office.

“Personally, I think at the moment, it’s totally hopeless,” Rauf said this week in a telephone interview from Vienna.  He described the agency as “stuck in the middle” between Israel and the Arabs.

The IAEA’s frustrations stem in part from a difference of view between Arab countries and Israel about whether nuclear weapons, including those of Israel, should be discussed as a first step or only after progress is made on other fronts.  Experts stressed that the success of regional talks will depend on their being comprehensive, rather than focusing solely on the nuclear question.

Hammad is among those trying to foster progress toward such talks.  Working with the nongovernmental Egyptian Council on Foreign Affairs, he has been contacting U.S. groups such as the Carnegie Endowment and nongovernmental organizations in the Middle East in a bid to organize a meeting next year, sponsored by NGOs but with an eye toward laying the groundwork for intergovernmental talks.

“I was really thinking of organizing a meeting between … the American community with nonproliferation, a meeting in the area to address the issue [of] how to establish this zone, how to have a plan for economic development as well as political reform,” Hammad said by telephone from Cairo.

“Really to get movement on the [Middle East] peace, you have to move also on creating this nuclear weapon-free zone,” he said.

Israeli expert Avner Cohen, who wrote the definitive 1998 book Israel and the Bomb, shares Hammad’s view of the region’s political and security affairs as profoundly linked, but he all but turned Hammad’s proposition around.

“Israel is the one who … is facing threats, existential threats. … A nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East cannot be achieved unless there is a positive move on the political side toward peace,” Cohen said.

Jentleson said political progress is necessary but that open discussion of Israel’s nuclear program must be possible.

“The Israeli nuclear program was on the table in ACRS.  The issue was, where do you start? …  I think a ‘Son of ACRS’ … probably can’t happen before real progress starts to get made again on the Palestinian-Israeli bilateral,” he said.

Iran Crisis Occupies Center Stage Despite Arab Focus on NWFZ

Nuclear weapon-free zones such as the one Arab countries are pushing to create in the Middle East are suggested in Article VII of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and governed by criteria set in 1975 by the U.N. General Assembly.  To date, zones are in force in Latin American, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia.  A nuclear weapon-free zone treaty for Africa has been signed by more than 50 nations and another for Central Asia is in the late stages of negotiation (see GSN, July 22).

In the IAEA General Conference resolution passed last month, which was initially submitted by Oman on behalf of the Arab League, countries declared themselves  “concerned by the grave consequence, endangering peace and security, of the presence in the Middle East region of nuclear activities not wholly devoted to peaceful purposes” and welcomed initiatives in pursuit of a nuclear weapon-free zone in the region.

The General Conference also called on Middle East countries “to forthwith accept the application of full-scope agency safeguards to all their nuclear activities as an important confidence-building measure among all states in the region and as a step in enhancing peace and security in the context of the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone.”

The U.N. General Assembly, whose latest such resolution dates from December of last year, is slated to receive a related report from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during its current session.

For now, though, the focus of the United States and other powerful players is on the more immediate problem of Iran’s suspected nuclear weapon development.

A nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East “would be a desirable ultimate situation,” U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Sept. 15 at the IAEA, “but right now, there is a specific question of compliance with the IAEA. … We shouldn’t … keep changing the subject because it happens to be preferable to the subject that the focus is on here, and that is on Iran and its conduct.”

At the urging of the United States, the IAEA Board of Governors has set an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to clear up contradictions between its pronouncements about its nuclear program and IAEA inspectors’ findings.  The board is slated to meet again next month and could remit the matter to the U.N. Security Council should it deem Iran to be in noncompliance with Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations.

Iran, Israel Face Off

Although many see the Iran controversy as an opportunity to push for regional talks such as those once conducted under the aegis of ACRS, such talks can be restarted only after the Iranian situation is resolved, according to Tel Aviv University political science professor Yair Evron.

Speaking last month at a Carnegie Endowment-PIR Center nonproliferation conference in Moscow, Evron said Israel’s nuclear weapons are “irrelevant” to regional stability but acknowledged that regional talks could be useful as a forum to “discuss, at depth, politics and strategy and arms control issues in the Middle East … on the condition that all the states taking part in this … recognize the right to exist of each other.”  Iran, he said, still refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Meanwhile, with no comprehensive solution in sight, U.S.-led demands for Tehran to come clean continue to be met with protestations about Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, deputy director general of international political affairs in Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said Sept. 19 at the Moscow conference that Israel, the “main obstacle” to nonproliferation in the Middle East, “has stubbornly refused to sign the NPT, despite international pressure.”  He evoked the possibility of an arms race in the Middle East, saying the situation “must be addressed through universal nonproliferation.”

A week earlier, as the IAEA board was imposing its deadline on Iran, Iranian envoy Ali Akbar Salehi also sought to keep Israel at the center of the debate.  “Among those who have pursued and produced nuclear weapons outside the five” declared nuclear weapons countries, Salehi said, “Israel gets away with murder.  It is pampered instead of being chastised.”

Some observers have questioned the pertinence of such remarks, suggesting that Israel is not especially relevant to Iran’s security situation.  In the Washington Quarterly’s Autumn 2003 issue, Shahram Rubin of the Geneva Center for Security Studies and Robert Litwak of the Woodrow Wilson International Center write that “Iran has used Israel as an all-purpose bogey.”

“Israel,” Rubin and Litwak write, “has served as a diversion and a pretext, in that Tehran uses its support for the Palestinians to deflect its neighbors’ concerns about Iran’s own WMD programs.”  The real reason Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, the scholars say, is that “hard-liners” in the country “see the program as the ultimate guarantor of Iran’s influence and security and, not incidentally, their own political power.”

Jentleson said Iranian references to the Israeli threat are “more rationalization than motivation … but it works.”

For its part, Israel maintains its time-tested ambiguity, refusing to acknowledge or declare its nuclear arms but not directly denying their existence.

“There’s been no change in Israel’s longstanding position that we won’t be the first country in the region to introduce nuclear weapons into the region,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Said Rauf, “Israel claims to be the only democracy in the region, but then, on the nuclear issue, it is a question of total opacity.”

Israel has also sought to portray itself as just one member of a united international front on the Iran question — “This isn’t an Israel-Iran issue; this is the global community,” Regev said — even as it has suggested it could eventually attack Iran, just as it bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

“At the moment,” Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon was quoted as saying last week, “there is continuing international diplomatic activity to deal with this threat, and it would be good if it succeeds.  But if that is not the case, we would consider our options.”

New Process Sought to Replace ACRS

The major international body convened to address arms control in the region, the U.S.- and Russian-chaired ACRS group, has been stalled since 1995, initially because of general regional discord and Israeli-Egyptian disagreement over what place nuclear weapon-free zone talks should have in the ACRS process.

One Western diplomat said last month’s IAEA General Conference resolution “doesn’t reflect reality,” since it expresses support for ACRS, which the diplomat said has “died.”

According to Jentleson, however, a “Son of ACRS” process is feasible and could involve all Arab League members, Israel and, as ACRS does not, Iran and Iraq.  “The core idea that ACRS was about still pertains; it just got put aside,” said Jentleson.

Jentleson added, though, that new talks must take into account subsequent developments such as the involvement of the Quartet — the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union — in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

“Whether ACRS itself is the right institutional format or not — probably not, because so many other things have changed. … I think it would be Son of ACRS,” he said.

Gottemoeller said even a “Son of ACRS” is not likely to get off the ground.  “Nobody’s talking about returning to the ACRS process.  It seems that people feel that that got itself into a dead end. … There does seem to be a mood for a fresh start,” she said.

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North Korea Says 8,000 Fuel Rods Reprocessed

North Korea announced that it has reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods in an important step toward developing a nuclear weapons arsenal, Xinhua News Agency reported today (see GSN, Oct. 1).

While meeting with reporters in New York, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon said that Pyongyang had “changed the purpose of these fuel rods.”

“Since the United States has threatened the D.P.R.K. with nuclear weapons to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the D.P.R.K., we have no choice but to be in possession of the nuclear deterrence,” he said (Xinhua News Agency, Oct. 1).

In an official statement, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that the reclusive country might continue reprocessing.

Pyongyang said more fuel rods at its Yongbyon plant could be reprocessed and “churned out in an unbroken chain” (James Brooke, New York Times, Oct. 2).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the issue was “serious” but he doubted the accuracy of the North Korean claims.

“This is the third time they have told us they just finished reprocessing the rods,” Powell said, adding, “we have no evidence to confirm that.”

He said officials in Washington are examining ways to meet North Korea’s demands for a nonaggression guarantee so that talks on the nuclear standoff could move forward (Federal News Service transcript, Oct. 2).

Analysts were unsure of how to take North Korea’s latest move.

“There is no way to verify what they are saying, but that does not mean it is not true,” said Scott Snyder, Korea representative for the Asia Foundation (Brooke, New York Times).

“One thing we can tell you is that we are in possession of a nuclear deterrence and we’re continuing to strengthen that deterrence,” Choe said.

Avoiding previous threats to proliferate weapons of mass destruction, Choe said that Pyongyang has “no intention of transferring any means of that nuclear deterrence to other countries.”

The vice foreign minister put a damper, however, on hopes that North Korea would soon meet with other regional powers to continue dialogue on the nuclear standoff.

“Certain mass media is circulating rumors as though we have just made promises to participate in the next round of the six-party talks,” Choe said, adding, “unfortunately, this is not true” (Reuters, Oct. 1).

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Moscow Criticizes NATO, Threatens to Modify Nuclear Strategy

Russia warned today that it would be forced to re-evaluate its nuclear weapons policies if NATO failed to adopt changes sought by Moscow.

“Should NATO remain a military alliance with its current offensive military strategy, this will prompt a fundamental reassessment of Russia’s military planning and arms procurement,” according to an internal Russian Defense Ministry document released today.

The review would include “changes to Russia’s nuclear strategy,” the document said.

Moscow has not approved of past NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and the alliance is now setting its eyes on the former Soviet Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — according to Agence France-Presse.

“Russia is carefully following NATO’s transformation, and expects it to put a complete end to direct and indirect elements of its anti-Russian policy,” the document said (Agence France-Press/SpaceWar.com, Oct. 2).

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