North Korea to dismantle nuclear weapon capability

In the history of the nuclear age, there have been four countries which possessed nuclear weapons and agreed to give them up. Three of them came into possession of these weapons almost by accident: In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, three former Soviet republics — Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan — found themselves in possession of the Red Army’s nuclear weapons: The USSR collapsed so quickly and so chaoticly, that the Red Army, disorganized and demoralized, did not make contingency plans to cart these weapons — and the missiles which were their delivery vehicles — back to Russia. After some horse trading, the three countries received sufficient economic inducements to give up these weapons (in the case of Kasakhstan, this also involved shipping large quantities of weapon-grade fissile materials to the United States). These three countries, though, did not have nuclear weapons making capabilities. The fourth country to give up nuclear weapons was South Africa, and it did have indigenous nuclear weapons making infrastructure: The apartheid regime managed to build six operable nuclear weapons — and in September 1979 collaborated with Israel in conducting an atmospheric nuclear test over the South Atlantic. In 1991, though, F. W. de Klerk concluded that majority rule was inevitable, and the last thing he and his colleagues wanted was the see the African National Congress (ANC) come to power in a nuclear-armed country. They arranged for UN inspectors to supervise the dismantling of the bombs — and of South African bomb-making capabilities.

This later example appears to be the model for North Korea. It is now more than four years since North Korea, the United States, and four other nations began to discuss a possible end to North Korea’s nuclear programs. AP reports that today, a truly unprecedented step in that direction is about to be taken as a team of U.S. nuclear experts, already in North Korea, will begin to oversee the disabling of the North’s main nuclear complex at Yongbyon. The chief U.S. envoy to the six-party talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has always been hesitant to sound too optimistic about the talks, but addressing reporters in Tokyo Saturday, Hill was able to report some real progress. “This will be the first time those facilities have ever been disabled. And of course the idea of disablement is to create a situation where it is very difficult to bring those back online - certainly a very expensive, difficult prospect of ever bringing them back online. So I think this is going to be a very important moment when it’s done,” he said. The U.S. team will be working with a North Korean team to carry out the disabling of the Yongbyon reactor and related facilities. Hill says the U.S. experts were set to travel to the site on Sunday. “They’ll be going to Yongbyon tomorrow, and by Monday they will begin their work,” he said.

The six-party talks began in Beijing in August 2003, among the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States. There were long delays and boycotts by North Korea along the way. In October of last year, Pyongyang announced it had conducted its first nuclear test. The scientific consensus was that the test was at best only a partial success, but scientists seem convinced that it was indeed a nuclear explosion. The international community reacted with outrage, and imposed sanctions against North Korea. Even the North’s traditional supporter, China, voted in the United Nations Security Council for sanctions. The six-party talks resumed, however, and in February an agreement in principle was reached. In return for aid and diplomatic concessions, Pyongyang said it would reveal and disable all of its nuclear programs. The Yongbyon reactor was shut down in July, and preliminary deliveries of fuel and other aid have been made. Hill says negotiators are expecting North Korea’s full list of its nuclear facilities and programs within two weeks, and full disablement is expected to begin early next year.