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Peter Kammerer

The unfettered transfer of weapons technology in Asia has possibly already given North Korea the expertise to make two nuclear bombs.

Experts estimated in 1999 that Pyongyang had a 20kg stockpile of plutonium, enough to make one or two weapons - a position supported by the Bush administration. These programmes were frozen under the October 21, 1994, agreement with the US, which put in place International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

At the time, the North had a five-megawatt (MW) reactor in Yongbyon, about 90km north of Pyongyang, and was building two others with capacities of 50MW and 200MW.

About 8,000 spent fuel rods were taken from the frozen reactor and sealed in metal cases under the IAEA's supervision. The amount of weapons-grade plutonium that could be extracted from the rods is estimated by experts to be about 20kg. They say it could make one or two nuclear devices.

Under the deal, the reactors would be replaced with light-water power plants while ties with Washington would be restored. Both sides also said they would work to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

However, the global lack of resolve on the treaty and other pacts on weapons non-proliferation has created the latest crisis, analysts say. The blame, they add, is on the Bush administration.

After taking office, President George W. Bush abandoned a policy of engagement put in place by his predecessor, Bill Clinton. In January, Mr Bush named North Korea - with Iraq and Iran - an 'axis of evil nations producing weapons of mass destruction'.

Last month, after North Korea admitted having started a uranium-enrichment programme, the US ended normalisation talks and said it would not resume until the scheme had been scrapped.

On Monday, a suspected North Korean ship carrying Scud missiles to Yemen was stopped and boarded by Spanish forces in the Arabian Sea after a month of US surveillance.

But North Korea had been left with little option other than to push the non-proliferation boundaries, said Richard Bingley, spokesman for the London-based Campaign Against Arms Trade.

'When you label a country like North Korea a pariah state and put trade sanctions upon it, then it's going to sell one of the only things it can produce domestically - and one is Scud weapons,' he said. 'It will also try and use all means at its disposal to coerce engagement.'

The research director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, Wade Boese, said a series of decisions made by the Bush administration - including withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and a deal with Russia in May to mothball rather than destroy missiles - showed a clear lack of will.

'At the very time we're trying to discourage and dissuade countries to give up or forego the possession of nuclear and other lethal weapons, the US seems to be trying to hedge or preserve its stockpile of weapons. If non-proliferation agreements are going to succeed, then the US is going to have to set a better example. At this time, the Bush administration has failed to do so.'

Mr Boese's colleague, North Korea analyst Paul Kerr, said the US did not perceive the secretive nation to be an immediate threat.

'There's a sense that the problem is manageable because the US has troops deployed in South Korea,' he said. 'North Korea's been a consistent problem, but it's been one that, in this administration's point of view, can be managed. If we didn't have Iraq to distract us, maybe we take a different tact on that.'

Observers believed that North Korea would only develop a nuclear weapon to win economic and diplomatic leverage. But it has ample experience and raw materials to carry out its threat. It maintains mines estimated by the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists to contain four million tonnes of exploitable high-quality uranium.

In the mid-1960s, it set up an atomic energy research complex in Yongbyon using a Soviet reactor assembled in 1965 and Soviet-trained scientists. Within a decade, it had started to build a research reactor.

In 1985, US officials said a secret nuclear reactor was being built near Yongbyon.

Under international pressure following the revelations, the North agreed to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapon. But it refused to sign a safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

Graphic: KAMM13GFN



US pushing Pyongyang into a corner