A Reactor Shut Down

Diplomacy with North Korea finally takes a step forward.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007; Page A18


INTERNATIONAL inspectors yesterday confirmed that North Korea had shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor -- and that nearly four years of multilateral diplomacy by the Bush administration had achieved a tangible result. Though some Western experts believe that the aging facility was already inoperative or close to it, the shutdown and readmission of inspectors is still significant: It will provide some assurance that North Korea's stock of nuclear bombs and plutonium will not grow. But as the administration itself has acknowledged, the first real test of whether North Korea can be disarmed by diplomacy still lies ahead.

The test will be whether the regime of Kim Jong Il follows through on its commitment to fully disclose all of its nuclear programs and materials -- something it has never been willing to do, even when it was bound by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The CIA believed North Korea had assembled one or two crude nuclear weapons by the early 1990s; since 2002, when it evicted inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it may have produced enough plutonium for another 10 to 12 bombs. It also purchased uranium-enrichment equipment from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan but has never publicly admitted it. Full disclosure would reveal just how large North Korea's nuclear arsenal is and would set the stage for its possible dismantlement. Disclosure would also indicate that one of the world's most isolated and criminal regimes might be prepared to initiate an entirely new relationship with its neighbors and the United States.

It's hard to believe that a dictatorship that tolerated the death by famine of millions of its own people, that brutally imprisons thousands of others in camps, and that depends on drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling and counterfeiting for much of its income is interested in or capable of such a momentous change. In the past, Pyongyang has used negotiations over its weapons merely as a means to extort food, fuel and money, and it has proved skillful in doing so. But the State Department is optimistic; the lead negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, predicted recently that "we are going to be able to achieve our full objectives" and that North Korea's promised disclosure could be made within months.

What isn't yet known is what North Korea will demand in exchange for further steps. The deal it struck with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in February calls for it to receive 950,000 tons of fuel oil, in addition to the 50,000 tons now being delivered. But before shutting down Yongbyon, North Korea delayed for three months and extracted several financial and political concessions from a Bush administration eager to show progress. Mr. Kim is likely to demand much bigger favors, which is why it's not surprising to hear about planning at State for negotiations on a possible peace treaty. The danger is that North Korea will take advantage of an outgoing administration's zeal to record a legacy achievement, without changing its longstanding and fundamental commitment to nuclear weapons. That's why U.S. negotiators should insist that a full and credible nuclear disclosure by North Korea precede any further concessions by the United States or its partners.