Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
March 27, 2008
Pg. 11
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer
North Korean military and industrial officials are "extremely unhappy" with the unprecedented access that U.S. diplomats were given to a missile factory last year, suggesting a split within the North Korean government about a pending deal to abandon its nuclear weapons, according to reports for Congress prepared by a staff member and a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who recently traveled to Pyongyang.
Keith Luse, an aide to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), and Siegfried S. Hecker, a former Los Alamos director now at Stanford University, spent four days in North Korea last month as negotiations remained stalled on whether North Korea would submit a complete declaration of its nuclear programs, as called for in the six-nation deal reached in February 2007.
North Korea maintains that it fully disclosed its nuclear activities last year, but it has slowed its disabling of a nuclear facility because the other parties have fallen behind in providing promised fuel oil. The other countries, led by the United States, said technical glitches led to the delivery delays but said North Korea has failed to disclose its interest in uranium enrichment and whether it cooperated with Syria in an alleged nuclear program destroyed by Israeli fighters last September. The declaration was due Dec. 31.
At a news conference in Washington yesterday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said "time and patience is running out" and urged North Korea to "submit the declaration as soon as possible."
North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il is often depicted as an absolute ruler. But the reports to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggest that he must accommodate other powers in the country. Luse reported that the North Korean military was resisting efforts by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to complete a deal.
"Chairman Kim's best efforts to orchestrate a balance among competing interests within the North may be a 'stretch too far' for North Korean military hardliners," Luse wrote. "Discarding the jewel of their arsenal will be difficult."
North Korea has a plutonium reactor at Yongbyon, which it restarted in 2002 after the collapse of a Clinton-era agreement that had frozen it. The Bush administration accused North Korea of cheating on the deal, claiming Pyongyang had purchased thousands of aluminum tubes that intelligence analysts said were being used in a clandestine uranium-enrichment program.
Plutonium and highly enriched uranium are different routes to building nuclear weapons. While North Korean harvested enough plutonium for more than six bombs from the restarted reactor -- which it is now disabling -- questions have persisted from the U.S. side on whether Pyongyang has pursued uranium enrichment.
In his own report, Hecker noted that North Korean officials asserted they had resolved all queries on uranium enrichment, even allowing U.S. experts last year to visit a missile factory using the tubes and permitting them to take samples home.
Government scientists later discovered traces of enriched uranium on the samples.
When Hecker asked to see the factory, he was told that North Korean "military and industrial officials were extremely unhappy with the access the Americans were granted and with the fact that they were given samples of the aluminum tubes. . . . I was told that neither I, nor anyone else, will get access again."
North Korean officials said that they had told U.S. officials they have 30 kilograms of reprocessed plutonium, which Hecker noted was lower than U.S. estimates of 40 to 50 kilograms. He told North Korean officials that it would "require substantial cooperation and transparency" to verify the number, and they responded that they were prepared to provide it.
March 27, 2008
Pg. 11
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer
North Korean military and industrial officials are "extremely unhappy" with the unprecedented access that U.S. diplomats were given to a missile factory last year, suggesting a split within the North Korean government about a pending deal to abandon its nuclear weapons, according to reports for Congress prepared by a staff member and a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who recently traveled to Pyongyang.
Keith Luse, an aide to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), and Siegfried S. Hecker, a former Los Alamos director now at Stanford University, spent four days in North Korea last month as negotiations remained stalled on whether North Korea would submit a complete declaration of its nuclear programs, as called for in the six-nation deal reached in February 2007.
North Korea maintains that it fully disclosed its nuclear activities last year, but it has slowed its disabling of a nuclear facility because the other parties have fallen behind in providing promised fuel oil. The other countries, led by the United States, said technical glitches led to the delivery delays but said North Korea has failed to disclose its interest in uranium enrichment and whether it cooperated with Syria in an alleged nuclear program destroyed by Israeli fighters last September. The declaration was due Dec. 31.
At a news conference in Washington yesterday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said "time and patience is running out" and urged North Korea to "submit the declaration as soon as possible."
North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il is often depicted as an absolute ruler. But the reports to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggest that he must accommodate other powers in the country. Luse reported that the North Korean military was resisting efforts by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to complete a deal.
"Chairman Kim's best efforts to orchestrate a balance among competing interests within the North may be a 'stretch too far' for North Korean military hardliners," Luse wrote. "Discarding the jewel of their arsenal will be difficult."
North Korea has a plutonium reactor at Yongbyon, which it restarted in 2002 after the collapse of a Clinton-era agreement that had frozen it. The Bush administration accused North Korea of cheating on the deal, claiming Pyongyang had purchased thousands of aluminum tubes that intelligence analysts said were being used in a clandestine uranium-enrichment program.
Plutonium and highly enriched uranium are different routes to building nuclear weapons. While North Korean harvested enough plutonium for more than six bombs from the restarted reactor -- which it is now disabling -- questions have persisted from the U.S. side on whether Pyongyang has pursued uranium enrichment.
In his own report, Hecker noted that North Korean officials asserted they had resolved all queries on uranium enrichment, even allowing U.S. experts last year to visit a missile factory using the tubes and permitting them to take samples home.
Government scientists later discovered traces of enriched uranium on the samples.
When Hecker asked to see the factory, he was told that North Korean "military and industrial officials were extremely unhappy with the access the Americans were granted and with the fact that they were given samples of the aluminum tubes. . . . I was told that neither I, nor anyone else, will get access again."
North Korean officials said that they had told U.S. officials they have 30 kilograms of reprocessed plutonium, which Hecker noted was lower than U.S. estimates of 40 to 50 kilograms. He told North Korean officials that it would "require substantial cooperation and transparency" to verify the number, and they responded that they were prepared to provide it.