· ASIA NEWS
· NOVEMBER 21, 2010
North Korea Nuclear Fears Grow
U.S. in Recent Months Shared Concerns With Chinese and Russian Leaders, People Familiar With the Matter Say
By JAY SOLOMON And ADAM ENTOUS
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama and senior U.S. diplomats have in recent months privately shared with their Chinese and Russian counterparts growing U.S. concerns that North Korea was taking steps to enrich uranium and that the effort, unless stopped, would have serious national-security implications, according to people familiar with the matter.
North Korea's nuclear ambitions are back in the spotlight after U.S. scientist spots enrichment facility during North Korea visit this month. Video courtesy of Reuters.
But the revelation on Saturday that Pyongyang had already installed thousands of centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel at its Yongbyon nuclear facility is raising questions inside Washington's nuclear-nonproliferation community about why more wasn't done by a succession of U.S. administrations to block the North's atomic advances.
U.S. officials and nonproliferation experts are specifically trying to gauge whether North Korea might already have in place additional uranium-enrichment sites that could be used to produce nuclear fuel at levels closer to weapons grade. There is also a renewed focus on the role that third countries, such as Pakistan and Iran, might have played in Pyongyang's proliferation activities, and the possibility that the North could begin exporting centrifuges and nuclear fuel overseas.
"This is not a crisis," said the U.S. envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, after meeting with South Korea's foreign minister Monday. But, Mr. Bosworth said, North Korea's uranium program is a violation of several agreements it has made with the U.S. and others in the six-party talks and a violation of U.N. resolution 1874, which was imposed after Pyongyang tested a nuclear explosive last year.
North Korea's alleged role in supplying Syria with a nearly completed nuclear reactor is stoking new fears that Pyongyang could emerge as the new engine for global proliferation—a role once played by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
"It's a travesty and tragedy that we didn't stop this program when we had the opportunity," said David Asher, who helped direct efforts to counter North Korea's proliferation activities in the George W. Bush administration. "My fear is that just as Iran's demands for enriched uranium for a bomb are expanding, North Korea may be in the position to begin supplying."
On Saturday, a Stanford physicist, Siegfried Hecker, startled Washington and Asia by releasing a report that documented what he said were 2,000 centrifuges that had been installed by North Korea at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.
Mr. Hecker said he saw the equipment during a North Korean-led tour of the site on Nov. 12. The North Koreans told the American scientist that the centrifuges were already beginning to enrich uranium to 3.5% purity for use in a light-water reactor that is under construction.
Mr. Hecker said in the report that he couldn't confirm that uranium gas had already been introduced into the centrifuges, but said he was "stunned" by the advancement and sophistication of the enrichment plant.
"Instead of seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges all neatly aligned and plumbed," Mr. Hecker wrote in his report.
Mr. Hecker estimated that the North Korean facility could produce around two tons of low-enriched uranium per year, or around ((40 kilograms)) 88 pounds of highly enriched uranium—nearly enough for a single atomic weapon.
Mr. Hecker's report seemed to put to rest a debate that has raged inside the U.S. intelligence community for nearly a decade: whether North Korea actually has a uranium-enrichment capacity. But the finger-pointing about how Pyongyang's facility grew so advanced without U.S. intervention only seemed to be beginning.
People familiar with issue said President Obama personally raised concerns about North Korea's uranium-enrichment activities with Chinese President Hu Jintao during a Nov. 11 meeting in Seoul.
Mr. Obama told Mr. Hu that, combined with the North's existing nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, the uranium-enrichment work raised serious national-security concerns for the U.S., one of the people said. The person wouldn't characterize Mr. Hu's response to Mr. Obama's presentation but said that "it got his attention."
§ Read Siegfried Hecker's assessment
Earlier this year, a U.S. delegation told Russian officials about Washington's concerns about the uranium-enrichment program, according to these people.
U.S. officials wouldn't confirm Sunday if the information presented by Mr. Obama and others was related to the same facility that Mr. Hecker visited.
However, an American intelligence official said, "American intelligence agencies have known about North Korea's uranium-enrichment activities for years. It's simply incorrect to suggest otherwise."
The Bush administration first raised concerns about Pyongyang's uranium-enrichment work in 2002.
U.S. intelligence agencies at the time detected North Korean efforts to acquire the aluminum tubes needed to build centrifuges from Pakistan and European suppliers. President Bush cited North Korea's suspected work as a reason to terminate a 1994 disarmament agreement reached with the North that sought to mothball the Yongbyon reactor in exchange for Western financial assistance.
Still, since 2002, current and former U.S. officials involved in counterproliferation said Washington and its allies have missed a string of opportunities to more clearly gauge North Korea's uranium-enrichment work and to move against it.
In 2003, German security forces foiled an attempt by a North Korean diplomat named Yun Ho-jin to import 22 metric tons of aluminum tubes into North Korea using Chinese front companies. The tubes were built to the exact same specifications as those used in Pakistan's centrifuge designs, according to current and former American officials, which U.S. intelligence officials believe Islamabad had shared with Pyongyang. But China's government balked at U.S. requests to detain Mr. Yun.
In May 2008, as part of another attempt to forge a disarmament agreement, North Korea handed over to the U.S. State Department 18,000 pages of operating records from the Yongbyon reactor that were contaminated with uranium particles from the Yongbyon facility. North Korea argued that the uranium was traced to equipment provided to Pyongyang by Pakistan, according U.S. officials involved in the exchange. But in retrospect, these officials said, there should have been more focus on the potential that North Korea was already beginning to enrich uranium.
The Obama administration this weekend dispatched Mr. Bosworth to South Korea, Japan and China to try to forge a united stand against North Korea. Mr. Bosworth and other U.S. officials are also seeking to gain a better understanding of the current state of North Korea's uranium-enrichment activities and how they fit into Pyongyang's broader nuclear program, according to American officials.
Nonproliferation experts are specifically wondering, however, whether North Korea might already have a second uranium-enrichment site that could produce nuclear fuel closer to the 90% enrichment level needed for a bomb. They also focused on whether Pyongyang already has an indigenous facility producing centrifuges on an industrial scale, possibly for export.
David Albright, a nuclear expert at Washington's Institute for Science and International Security, said the U.S. needs to understand what role third countries may have played in developing North Korea's facility. U.S. intelligence officials believe that Pakistan provided Pyongyang with the designs for the P-2 centrifuge, a more advanced centrifuge that can enrich uranium more efficiently and quickly than the P-1. But Mr. Albright believes countries like Iran may have played a role in helping the North obtain some of the sophisticated computer-control systems found at the Yongbyon facility.
"Iran and North Korea appear in some cases to use similar illicit procurement networks," Mr. Albright said.+
Mr. Bosworth and the Obama administration will also need to come up with a new longer-term strategy to confront North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Il, acknowledged U.S. officials.
Mr. Hecker argued in his report that the U.S. had no choice now but to directly sit down with the North Koreans to try to find new diplomatic tools with which to contain Pyongyang's nuclear activities. The U.S. has been working through a diplomatic process that also involves China, South Korea, Japan and Russia to try to end North Korea's nuclear program.
"It is clear that waiting patiently for Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks on terms acceptable to the United States and its allies will exacerbate the problem," Mr. Hecker wrote.
The new revelations, however, appeared to reinforce doubts within the administration about getting back into negotiations with North Korea that could result in the U.S. providing financial assistance to the North in exchange for the North taking disarmament steps it had already pledged to take. The White House is "prepared to negotiate with North Korea if it demonstrates that it is serious about honoring its commitments by taking concrete and irreversible steps towards denuclearization," a senior administration official said.
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