By Professor Joseph B. Varner
As the world’s attention focuses on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there is a risk that the international community will allow North Korea’s program to fall between the cracks. This would be a serious mistake.
North Korea is supposed to be disabling its nuclear plants pursuant to an agreement which was the outcome of negotiations between it and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan. Under the terms of the agreement, North Korea was also to divulge all of its nuclear programs and activities by the end of last year. In exchange, it was to receive 1 million tones of fuel oil, establish normal relations with the United States and Japan and move toward a formal peace agreement.
Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly to those who have been following this saga through the years, the North Koreans failed to make full disclosure by the agreed-upon deadline.
Last Friday (February 22) U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed North Korea to honour its commitments and disclose both its nuclear weapons programs and its alleged proliferation activities. The North Koreans are widely believed to be a global leader in proliferation of both missile and missile technology and nuclear technology. In July 2006 it test-fired seven missiles, including the long-range Taepodong-2, which in theory could reach the US west coast. These tests were soon followed by its first nuclear test, conducted in October 2006.
Washington is particularly interested in information surrounding a possible transfer of nuclear technology from North Korea to Syria, speculating that an Israeli air strike in Syria last September may have targeted a joint nuclear project. That attack on September 6 is believed to have destroyed a Syrian construction site on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, located 11 kilometres north of At-Tibnah in the Deir Az-Zur region, some 145 kilometres from the Iraqi border.
Raising suspicions further is the fact that satellite photos show that the complex, which the Syrians have admitted was military, has now been completely raised, erasing any evidence of what the site was actually intended for. Informed opinion has suggested that it was a nuclear reactor complex to produce material for nuclear weapons. According to David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and a former UN weapons inspector, the buildings appeared similar to the North Korean 20 – 25 MW thermal reactor building in Yongbyon.
Professor Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University, a former scientist in Israel’s nuclear program, believes that the Syrian structure that was attacked and destroyed was an actual bomb factory. The assembly of one bomb requires about four kilograms of fissionable material. After its nuclear test conducted about a year ago, North Korea still had enough plutonium (an estimated 40 kg) to produce 10 atom bombs. The whereabouts of this plutonium is unknown as it is not under supervision.
It appears that North Korea and Syria have a great deal to answer for. That was six months ago. The international community might rightly ask: what else has North Korea transferred abroad, to whom? What else has it been up to under the guise of diplomacy since then?
So far, answers have not been forthcoming.
*Article originally published on www.intelligencedigest.ca Feb. 25, 2008
Professor Varner teaches courses in homeland security and intelligence studies at American Military University and serves as the Program Director for the Department of Homeland Security.
Comments are closed.