THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 21, 1994 TAG: 9410210024
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A20 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
The State Department and the Clinton White House are patting themselves on the back for the agreement scheduled for signing today that the administration claims lessens the danger of North Korea developing an atomic bomb. A hard look at this agreement, however, reveals little reason for celebration.
For one thing, the agreement is enormously complex, detailed, and its provisions are spread out over a decade. That alone is a warning sign, for it will present the legalistically minded North Korean regime with endless opportunities for ``re-interpretation'' and stalling.
Under the terms, the United States, South Korea and Japan will provide North Korea, free of charge, with two new state-of-the-art nuclear-power reactors that Western experts claim will be much more difficult to employ for covert bomb-making. In the meantime, the United States agrees to provide North Korea with oil to generate the energy it is losing by agreeing not to reopen its existing nuclear plants.
And that's not all. North Korea also gets a certain degree of diplomatic recognition from the United States as well as an easing of trade restrictions, goals of the isolated regime for years.
What does North Korea pledge in return? That United Nations inspections of the 8,000 spent fuel rods widely suspected as the source of nuclear bomb fuel will be permitted - in five years' time. Deep down in the news stories trumpeting the agreement were buried the concerns of nuclear inspectors that this sets a terrible precedent for dealing with potential nuclear-weapon states such as Iran or Iraq.
In fact, Iraq offers an object lesson on the dangers of this agreement. Shortly after the premature end of the Persian Gulf war, an Iraqi scientist involved in his country's nuclear-weapons program made it to U.S. lines. Up to this point, U.S. military intelligence thought the Iraqi nuclear program had been thoroughly pummeled during the war. Not so, said the scientist, who revealed that Saddam's nuclear program was much less damaged than was previously believed.
The agreement with North Korea, therefore, only affects programs and installations that the United States is aware of. Small as it looks on a map, North Korea is a big place and there is plenty of room for hiding things, especially underground. If the North Koreans believe that a phony ``agreement'' will take the heat off for a while, and give them a badly needed economic shot in the arm to boot, they probably figure they might as well go for it.
This analysis could be utterly wrong, of course. Perhaps the Hermit Kingdom's new chieftain, Kim Jong Il, really desires an agreement. But all outside observers have to go on is the track record, and it is one of broken agreements and unkept promises. There is a name for truckling to nations that engage in such behavior. It's ``appeasement.'' by CNB