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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (155232)	11/25/2002 6:23:56 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579980

ALLIANCES In North Korea and Pakistan, Deep Roots of Nuclear Barter (Page 3 of 4) But within three years, Kim Jong Il grew disenchanted with the accord and feared that the nuclear power plants would never be delivered. He never allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to begin the wide-ranging inspections required before the critical parts of the plants could be delivered. By 1997 or 1998, American intelligence has now concluded, he was searching for an alternative way to build a bomb, without detection. He found part of the answer in Pakistan, which along with Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Egypt was now a regular customer for North Korean missile parts, American military officials said. A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, who had years ago stolen the engineering plans for gas centrifuges from the Netherlands, visited North Korea several times. The visits were always cloaked in secrecy. But several things are now clear. Pakistan was running out of hard currency to pay the North Koreans, who were in worse shape. North Korea feared that without a nuclear weapon it would eventually be absorbed by the economic might of the South, or squeezed by the military might of the United States. In 1997 or 1998, Kim Jong Il and his generals decided to begin a development project for a bomb based on highly enriched uranium, a slow and difficult process, but relatively easy to hide. Talking, but Not Changing They did so even while sporadically pursuing a better relationship with Washington. In the last days of the Clinton administration, the North negotiated with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright for a deal to restrict North Korean missile exports in return for a removal of economic penalties, a de-listing from the State Department's account of countries that sponsor terrorism and talks about diplomatic recognition. The deal was never reached. President Clinton even considered an end-of-term trip to North Korea, but was talked out of it by aides who feared that the North was not ready to make real concessions. The nuclear revelations of the past few weeks suggest those aides saved Mr. Clinton from embarrassment. "Lamentably, North Korea never really changed," said one senior Western official here with long experience in the topic. "They came to the conclusion that the nuclear card was their one ace in the hole, and they couldn't give it up." American intelligence agencies, meanwhile, suspected that North Korea was restarting a secret program. In 1998, satellites were focused on a huge underground site where the C.I.A. believed Kim Jong Il was trying to build a second plutonium-reprocessing center. But they were looking in the wrong place: after American officials negotiated access to the suspect site, they found only a series of man-made caves with no nuclear-related equipment, and no apparent purpose. "World's largest underground parking lot," one American intelligence official joked at the time. Rumors of a secret enriched-uranium project persisted, however. The C.I.A. and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee evaluated the evidence but reached no firm conclusion. But there were hints. One Western diplomat who visited North Korea in May 1998, just as world attention focused on Pakistan, which had responded to India's underground nuclear tests by setting off six of its own, recalled witnessing an odd celebration. "I was in the Foreign Ministry," the official recalled last week. "About 10 minutes into our meeting, the North Korean diplomat we were seeing broke into a big smile and pointed with pride to these tests. They were all elated. "Here was a model of a poor state getting away with developing a nuclear weapon." When the Clinton administration raised the rumors of a Pakistan-North Korea link with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who succeeded Ms. Bhutto, he denied them. It was only after General Musharraf overthrew Mr. Sharif's government, and after Mr. Bush took office, that South Korean intelligence agencies picked up strong evidence that North Korea was buying components for an enriched-uranium program. Continued <<Previous \| 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 \| Next>>

To: tejek who wrote (155232)	11/25/2002 6:29:56 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579980

Ted, from the article you posted: In return, the United States and its allies promised North Korea a steady flow of fuel oil and the eventual delivery of two proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors to produce electric power. That was important in a country so lacking in power that, from satellite images taken at night, it appears like a black hole compared to the blazing lights of South Korea. Remember what I said about "One step at a time"? Message 18138229 Halting fuel oil shipments to North Korea is a big step. Unfortunately, it'll only succeed in hurting innocent civilians, and North Korea will still blame America for that. Tenchusatsu