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North Korea violates nuclear treaties
By Alexis Dyer
National/World Co-Editor
The U.N. nuclear agency declared on Monday that North Korea is in
violation of international nuclear nonproliferation agreements.
The agency has sent the dispute to the security council, which
has the ability to impose sanctions on the country. This action has
some worried as North Korean president Kim Jong Il said that further
sanctions would be viewed as an act of war.
Rodong Sinmum, the North Korean party newspaper, also warned
of the consequences if the United States considered a pre-emptive strike on the nuclear complex, saying, according to The New York
Times, “aـpre-emptive strike on our peaceful nuclear facilities”
would “spark a total war.” It went on to say that it would be “foolish
for the United States to think that we sit idle with folded arms to
wait until it gives orders.”
Some believe that this statement infers a possible pre-emptive
strike on the United States from North Korea. Especially, experts told The New
York Times, if the United States builds up its forces in the western Pacific,
which the Pentagon says may happen.
New United States intelligence reports indicate that North Korea does
indeed possess weaponry capable of reaching the United States It claims that Pyongyang has an
untested three-stage version of the Taepo Dong 2 ballistic missile that could reach the western part of the country.
North Korea currently has a voluntary moratorium on flight
tests of its long-range missiles, but Washington fears that it may
resume shortly.
In the past week the country has announced the reopening of a
five-watt reactor nuclear power plant at Yongbyon that experts say
would be capable of producing weapons-grade uranium.
North Korea, according to The New York Times, said that the
plant would “for the present” be usedonly to produce electricity.
However, the United States says that the site could produce nuclear
weapons within months. Experts are also saying that the plant would be
capable of only producing minimal amounts of power.
American intelligence analysts are concerned as well with
satellite imagery that shows tarp-covered trucks moving in and out of
the site. One theory on the vehicles is that they are picking up the
8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that North Korean technicians removed
from a cooling pond after the country backed out of the nuclear
nonproliferation treaty in December.
Plutonium that can be used in making nuclear warheads could,
in theory, be extracted from the fuel rods.
In response to the announcement about the nuclear plant,
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said, according to The New
York Times, “The North Korean regime seems to believe that the way to
get people to engage with it is to try and blackmail them into it. And what the United States is saying is that blackmail will not work.”
Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld also said, according to The
New York Times, that North Korea is ruled by a terrorist regime” that
has been “involved in things that are harmful to other countries.”
Experts claim that North Korea’s actions have been carefully
calibrated to align with mounting tensions between the United States and Iraq. The Bush administration recently issued a warning against trying to
take advantage of its focus on Iraq, saying, according to The New York
Times, that it would maintain a military deterrent in the region even
though it seeks a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Meanwhile, Democrats are criticizing the White House’s policy
on North Korea, calling it too “fuzzy” and “passive,” according to The
New York Times. They also said that it was a policy of “designed neglect."
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