North Korea (not Iraq): The Real Nuclear Threat

April 21, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Real Nuclear Danger
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

In the summer of 2001, there was a spike in Al Qaeda "chatter" and mounting evidence that a terror strike was imminent. But without precise details, it was difficult to get the attention of top policy makers or the public ?- until it was too late.

Now something similar is happening in North Korea.

North Korea is potentially more dangerous than the mess in Iraq. It probably has at least 1 to 3 nuclear weapons already, it is producing both plutonium and uranium, and it is on track to have close to 10 nuclear weapons by the end of this year.

Yet because President Bush's policy has failed in North Korea, Washington is determinedly looking the other way. When we next focus on North Korea, after the election, it could be a nuclear Wal-Mart.

North Korea not only has genuine nuclear weapons programs, but it is also the model of a rogue state: it gets its U.S. currency by printing it. That's right; it counterfeits excellent American $100 bills.

The latest disclosure, via David "Scoop" Sanger of The Times, is that the father of Pakistan's bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, claims that North Korea showed him three nuclear weapons in 1999. The Bush administration, after publicizing anything to do with Iraqi W.M.D., tried to keep that North Korean revelation secret.

Dr. Khan's report has not been confirmed. But this much is sure: The Bush administration has invaded a country on far less evidence.

Worse, North Korea is reprocessing enough plutonium to make an additional half-dozen weapons. It has also restarted one nuclear reactor and will soon replace the fuel rods there, producing enough plutonium for another weapon. All of that activity began during the Bush administration. North Korea is also continuing a uranium enrichment program that it covertly began in the Clinton years.

To his credit, Vice President Dick Cheney forthrightly raised concerns about North Korea's nuclear program during his trip to Beijing last week. But the administration still has no effective plan to deal with the crisis.

Soft-liners in the administration would like to negotiate a "grand bargain" with North Korea in which Kim Jong Il would accept C.V.I.D. ?- that's the latest hot term, standing for "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement." In exchange, the U.S. would present security assurances, and Asian countries would offer bribes of investment, energy and aid. Such a negotiated deal is the only hope, but to hard-liners, it sounds suspiciously Clintonian.

Meanwhile, the administration is playing a delaying game with six-party talks in China, and starting working-level talks in the next month through Joseph DeTrani, a former C.I.A. officer and China hand. The DeTrani channel will be an important step forward, but it's difficult to imagine a deal that both the Bush and Kim administrations could agree on ?- and in the meantime, North Korea keeps churning out nukes.

"The administration is just trying to kick this can down the road," said Jonathan Pollack of the Naval War College. "In a funny way, I think both we and the North Koreans are waiting for November."

Resolving this crisis is in the interests of virtually everybody on the planet, with two exceptions: President Bush and Mr. Kim. They may have nothing else in common, except that their fathers also ran their countries, but they do share an interest in delay.

Mr. Bush has his hands full with Iraq and doesn't want attention paid to the North Korean nuclear threat, which is substantially worsening on his watch. Mr. Kim figures that he may as well wait to see whether John Kerry is elected, and he'd also like to finish reprocessing the plutonium and enriching the uranium.

While the administration has steadily become more reasonable on North Korea, it still hasn't fully accepted the unpalatable truth: the only possible route out of this crisis is a grand bargain. Mr. Bush, who listened way too much to Mr. Cheney on the topic of Iraq, should reflect on something Mr. Cheney said on his China trip about negotiations over North Korea's nuclear programs: "Time is not necessarily on our side."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/opinion/21KRIS.html?pagewanted=print&position=