AFP,
Washington: The tentative agreement to end North Korea's nuclear weapons program is by no means secure as several key details have been left hanging, including the vital question of whether Pyongyang can pursue sensitive uranium enrichment activities, analysts say.
“The crisis is not over and there are important verification and implementation details to negotiate although we have turned an important nuclear corner on the Korean Peninsula,” said Joseph Cirincione, Director for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Although the United States, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea managed to convince North Korea to disband its nuclear weapons network, they made a key concession – allowing the hardline communist state to pursue peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
This has left everyone guessing whether under such a peaceful nuclear program, North Korea could produce enriched uranium, which can be fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors or the raw material for nuclear bombs.
“The answer is: we don't know yet,” said Cirincione, a leading American arms expert and author of “Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats.”
“This was clearly the key issue that threatened to sink the agreement,” he told AFP.
Among the key points under the “Statement of Principles” reached at the six-party talks in Beijing was allowing North Korea the “right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
The five parties expressed “their respect” and agreed to discuss “at an appropriate time” provision of lightwater reactors to Pyongyang, the statement said.
This signifies a major change in policy by the Bush administration, which had vehemently opposed any North Korean use of lightwater reactors.
Pyongyang reneged on a previous nuclear deal with the United States by mounting a secret program to enrich uranium, an allegation that triggered the current crisis in 2002.
Under the 1994 deal known as the Agreed Framework, the United States agreed to provide fuel for North Korea until an international consortium built light-water nuclear reactors to generate power.
Charles Pritchard, a key US government negotiator with the North Koreans under President Bill Clinton, said verification of North Korea's nuclear activities would be “one of the very tough things to occur.”
“The verification process by necessity would have to begin with a statement of accountability by the North Koreans as to what their complete program comprises of – both facilities, plutonium holdings and any kind of nuclear devices that they have,” he said.
Pritchard, who quit in 2003 due to apparent policy differences with the Bush administration, said verification would also have to cover “any connection the North Koreans have to enriched uranium.”
That, he said, would then be the basis for developing a multilateral strategy for verification and dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear programs.
“You can't do the latter without the former and that's going to be very difficult. The North Koreans are going to be very reluctant to provide all of that detail earlier on,” said Pritchard, the longest-serving North Korea expert in government before his departure.
Analysts also said that the “compromise language” under the Beijing agreement skirted any resolution to the uranium enrichment controversy.
The North Koreans had refused to sign an agreement without the mention of lightwater reactors and the United States essentially backed down from its stand that it would not discuss the reactors at all, the analysts said.
The parties now have to define what peaceful uses of nuclear energy entail.
“Do they include a power reactor? Apparently, they do, do they include facilities for making the fuel for that power reactor – which is uranium enrichment? We don't know yet,” Cirincione said.
North Korea's five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which purportedly was to be used to produce electricity, has been basically operated as a factory for weapons-grade plutonium.
