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The Bush administration stumbles again with North Korea

Barrister Harun ur Rashid
WHEN President George W. Bush leaves his office by next January what kind of legacy would he leave behind?
Bush's policies towards Iraq, Iran and North Korea will loom large when historians judge his presidency. His hallmark has been a readiness to break with long-established bipartisan positions and adopt stunningly new policies that have failed to achieve their goal.
Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, the oldest Senator in the US, said about the record of the Bush administration in the following words: “Today I weep for my country. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper... Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned."
US Policy towards North Korea
During 2002 the US President described North Korea as part of an “axis of evil”, lumping it together with Iraq and Iran. Furthermore the Bush administration threatened military action against North Korea, ended the shipment of fuel, oil and the construction of nuclear plants on the plea that North Korea breached the agreement. The US also refused to hold bilateral talks, as was the case during the Clinton administration.
Later the Bush administration changed its policy and started to negotiate with North Korea. It came to an agreement where North Korea would disable the Yongbyon nuclear reactor.
However, the agreement with North Korea to disable its nuclear programmes is being turned into a failure when North Korea said on August 26th that it had stopped disabling its main nuclear complex and threatened to restore facilities that the country had used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
A spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry of North Korea reportedly said: “There is nothing in any of our agreements with the US where verification of the declaration is a prerequisite for being fallen off the list of statesponsors of terrorism. We have decided to immediately suspend disabling our nuclear facilities. This measure has been effective
on August 14 and related parties have been notified.”
Removing North Korea from Washington's list of state sponsors is a demand from North Korea in exchange for disabling nuclear facilities. North Korea alleges that the US has not kept its commitment to take the country off a terrorism list and accordingly it cannot honour the agreement.
Work started at Yongbyon late last year to disable a nuclear reactor, a factory that produces fuel for the reactor and a laboratory that can extract plutonium from spent fuel rods unloaded from the reactor.
Disablement does not meet Washington's ultimate goal of dismantling the nuclear programme. Washington wants full access by inspectors to all suspected nuclear sites, including the uranium based ones, so that there will be no hidden nuclear sites.
North Korea does not want Washington to do that. A spokesperson reportedly said
"The US is gravely mistaken if it thinks it can make a house search in our country as it pleases just as it did in Iraq.”
Currently it is back to square
one as North Korea refused to disable its nuclear facilities unless it is removed from the list of terrorist states.
New factors emerging for nuclear proliferation In the past decade, the urgency that once drove nuclear nonproliferation efforts has evaporated as inter-state conflict increased. The Iraqi war demonstrated that if Iraq had nuclear weapons, the US could not invade it in 2003. Possession of nuclear weapons is a deterrent.
Many countries that earlier had abandoned nuclear energy are now seriously thinking to opt for nuclear energy. Once a country wants to generate nuclear energy for its needs, the technology in making nuclear energy for peaceful purpose remains the same for manufacturing nuclear weapons. It depends simply on the enrichment of uranium5 per cent enrichment for nuclear energy and more than 80 per cent for nuclear weapons.
It is the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) that inspects and monitors that peaceful purpose is not converted to military purpose for countries that are parties to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
If a country is not a party to NPT, it can avoid IAEA's inspections. India, Pakistan and Israel have been able to develop nuclear weapons without IAEA's inspections. North Korea withdrew from the NPT so that it could legally develop nuclear weapons and conduct tests.
Nuclear weapons are not only for security of many developing countries but also constitute projection of power to be counted by the big nuclear powers. It is a fact that if Pakistan or Iraq had nuclear weapons, the 1971 Indo-Pakistan or the US-led GulfWar in 1990 and 2003 would not have occurred.
In an article published some years ago in the respected journal Foreign Policy, the former US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara pointed out that the US maintains 2000 warheads on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched at 15 minutes' notice, and its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review assumes that a modernized nuclear arsenal consisting of thousands of warheads will remain a core element in US military posture for decades.
McNamara describes US nuclear doctrine as "immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous."
He added "If the US continues its current nuclear stance, over time, substantial proliferation of nuclear weapons will almost surely follow. Some or all, of such nations as Egypt, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Taiwan will very likely initiate nuclear weapons programs, increasing both the risk of use of the weapons and the division of weapons and fissile materials into hands of rogue states or terrorists."
Conclusion
The double-standard policyof the US appears to have only encouraged other states to seek the security of nuclear weapons. While it agrees to provide nuclear fuel and technology to India, a non-member of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, for strategic reasons to contain China, it opposes peaceful nuclear energy programmes in Iran lest Israel loses its supremacy in power in the region.
With the Russia-West tension on Georgian conflict, the international situation has become fluid and more and more countries are likely to pursue programmes of nuclear proliferation.
The author is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva