WASHINGTON -- The proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology out of North Korea will remain possible unless independent inspections are conducted within that isolated nation, the U.S. military's top commander in the Pacific said here yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 15).
(Sep. 16) -
A North Korean cargo vessel docks at a port in Myanmar in 2007. North Korea will retain its ability to sell nuclear materials and technology unless a thorough inspections regime is imposed inside the country, the head of U.S. Pacific Command said yesterday (Khin Maung Win/Getty Images).
Until the Stalinist state allows monitors from an outside organization or government to conduct "certifiable, verifiable inspections" of its nuclear infrastructure, proliferation from Pyongyang is not "under control," Adm. Timothy Keating, head of U.S. Pacific Command, said during a Defense Writers Group breakfast.
"Lack of oversight would indicate to me ... a degree of uncertainty as to potential North Korean proliferation," he said. "If we don't know they aren't, I know you can make a case that they might be considering and therefore we're going to remain ready to respond."
"I don't know that they're gonna, but I also haven't been [directed] to knock off being prepared," Keating added. That includes readiness to interdict ships suspected of carrying nuclear or missile technology, he said.
North Korea has long been suspected of acquiring cash by selling nuclear and missile technology and know-how to other countries.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has conducted inspections in the country on and off since the 1980s. The regime expelled inspectors and disabled monitoring technology at the plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear complex in December 2002 after being accused by the Bush administration of having a secret uranium-enrichment program.
Monitoring agents were allowed in again in 2007 but Pyongyang expelled them in April, and declared talks on its nuclear program "dead," after the U.N. Security Council condemned the country's rocket launch that month.
The United States, along with China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, has spent years on a diplomatic effort to convince North Korea to abolish its nuclear program. The regime has alternated between compliance and provocation, taking steps toward denuclearization but also testing two nuclear weapons.
There has been widespread suspicion in the international community that the North assisted Syria in building an alleged nuclear reactor destroyed in a 2007 Israeli airstrike, and that the regime is working with Myanmar to build an underground nuclear facility (see GSN, Aug. 10).
This summer a North Korean cargo vessel was monitored for possibly carrying missile technology to Myanmar in violation of a U.N. arms embargo issued following the North's May nuclear detonation (see GSN, June 22). The ship apparently returned to port in its home nation without dropping off any material.
Victor Cha, a former adviser on Pyongyang to the Bush administration, agreed with Keating's assessment.
North Korean "proliferation is the gravest threat to U.S. security, more so than their shooting a nuke-tipped missile at us," he said yesterday in an e-mail message. "We know how to punish proliferation acts. We know how to try to defend against it. But we do not know yet how to deter. In this sense, I would agree with Keating that it is not under control."
Inspections of North Korea's nuclear infrastructure are a core element to the six-party process, according to John Park, director of the Korea Working Group at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Verifiable inspections are "the dominant school of thought" regarding how to the international community should approach the country's nuclear program, he told Global Security Newswire yesterday in a phone interview.
Other approaches might involve accepting that Pyongyang will maintain a "minimum" nuclear deterrent or regime change, which was advocated heavily earlier this decade, Park said.
Challenges to the six-party talks approach include the "level of intrusiveness of the inspections" as they would require a high degree of cooperation from the host country, and the amount of resources devoted to the program, according to Park.
Preventing North Korea from proliferating nuclear weapons and technology is the "highest priority in the short-run," said, Nicholas Szechenyi, a Northeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"The North Koreans don't have any credibility. They make agreements and they don't abide by them," he said today in a phone interview, adding that inspections had been part of the plan discussed in the six-party talks.
"So in a sense we're back at square one," he said.
Szechenyi said the kind of inspections endorsed by Keating must be part of a robust diplomatic outreach strategy that also includes financial sanctions.
"If you can cut down on financing, be a little more vigilant on proliferation and make a tough international framework" that includes inspections "it could lessen the risks but it needs to be all three," he told GSN.