This was no bluff. The next day, Pyongyang officially asked the IAEA to remove its seals and surveillance equipment from the Yongbyon facilities. For a few days, we exchanged messages with our North Korean counterparts. It was Christmastime, and I was operating from a beach resort in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where my family was on holiday. I gave phone interviews to CNN from our hotel room, using my son, Mostafa, as an assistant. I kept the IAEA Board of Governors informed of the deteriorating situation. Coordinating with my team in Vienna, we tried every argument we could think of to dissuade Pyongyang from rash action.
On December 26, I made a statement condemning these actions because of the “serious proliferation concerns” they raised and criticizing North Korea for its “nuclear brinksmanship.” But no one was backing down. The director general of North Korea’s General Department of Atomic Energy, Ri Je Son, requested formally that we remove our inspectors immediately. We had no choice but to bring them back to Vienna.
In an emergency session, the IAEA Board adopted a resolution deploring North Korea’s unilateral actions and calling for reinstatement of IAEA measures. Four days later, on January 10, 2003, North Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT. Within weeks, North Korean technicians began removing and disabling the IAEA monitoring equipment. They initiated repairs to restart the reactor, began moving fuel rods, and took steps to resume reprocessing spent fuel.
I publicly urged Pyongyang to reverse its decision, saying it was counterproductive to the efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula. In fact, cabinet-level officials from North and South Korea met later in the month, looking for some sort of diplomatic way out. But it was clear that the damage had been done, at least for the time being
The hard-liners in the United States were clearly pleased that rapprochement with North Korea was brought to a halt. To them, the very idea of engaging with Kim Jong Il’s regime was repugnant. Nor were they fond of the Agreed Framework, which they characterized as rewarding North Korea for its violation of the NPT. While the Agreed Framework was indeed a flawed arrangement, the alternative would turn out to be much worse.
Of course, the IAEA Board referred the situation to the Security Council, but the council took no action. Granted, its attention, like that of the rest of the world, was strongly focused on the catastrophe taking shape a continent away in Iraq. But the real reason was China, a veto-wielding member of the P-5, whose view held sway. China stuck to its customary, and justifiable, belief that the only way to resolve the North Korean crisis or similar issues was through negotiations and dialogue. Thus, in April 2003, Beijing hosted direct talks between the United States and North Korea, but the parties made little progress, attempts at closed-door diplomacy giving way to demands, public accusations, and rejected offers.
Soon after, North Korea announced the end of its last remaining non-proliferation pact: a 1992 bilateral agreement with South Korea to keep the peninsula free of nuclear weapons. Undeterred, China continued to press for a diplomatic resolution, hosting the first of what would be dubbed the “six-nation” or “six-party” talks: a long-running series of negotiations that, in addition to North Korea and the United States, would include Japan, Russia, and South Korea.
The IAEA was given no role in the six-party talks. Indeed, in every practical sense, the years that followed North Korea’s 2003 exit from the NPT were, from the IAEA’s perspective, a black box. We were kept in the dark. We had no inspection presence in North Korea. While I supported the efforts to engage the North Koreans in dialogue through the six-party talks, the lack of a unified and consistent international response to the North Korean escalation was, in my view, setting a dangerous precedent. On the one hand, in the case of Iraq, the government had invited in the international weapons inspectors who had found no evidence of continuing WMD programs, yet the inspection findings had been put to one side in favor of an invasion (allegedly based on a “threat to international peace and security”). On the other hand, North Korea’s government had failed to answer questions about concealed plutonium, secret facilities, and its alleged undeclared enrichment program; Agency inspectors had been sent out of the country; and the North Koreans had withdrawn from the NPT—sending a strong signal regarding their intentions—yet there was no collective condemnation by the Security Council, and the IAEA, the body charged with preventing nuclear proliferation, was not even part of ongoing talks.[7]
At each meeting of the IAEA Board, I expressed my concern and our willingness to work with all parties toward a comprehensive solution that would address both North Korea’s security interests and the non-proliferation priorities of the international community. Behind the scenes, I asked various members of the six-party talks for information, but there seemed to be little to report.
I also used public forums to express my dissatisfaction. During an open discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations, I told the group: “What I worry about with North Korea is that it sends the worst signals to would-be proliferators: that if you want to protect yourself, you should accelerate your [nuclear] program—because then you are immune in a way. Then people will sit around the table with you. And if you do not do that fast enough, you might be subject to preemption”—referring, of course, to the military action in Iraq.[8]
I met with Colin Powell in Washington in June 2004. By that time, the six parties were finishing their third round of talks, with no breakthroughs in sight. Powell told me that he was open to taking a more flexible approach on North Korea. He speculated, however, that the North Koreans might be stalling until November. “If I were the North Koreans,” he said, “I would wait for the result of the elections—because if the Democrats were to win the White House, they most likely would adopt a more flexible approach.”
From what I could glean, in addition to the construction of the two power reactors, North Korea was pushing for more aid, as well as for security guarantees and eventual normalization of relations with the United States in exchange for giving up its nuclear program. The United States, and to some extent Japan, were pushing back. They wanted North Korea to completely dismantle its nuclear facilities and to do so in a way that would prevent any restart of fuel cycle operations; the United States also urged withholding international aid until North Korea had taken major, verifiable steps. China, Russia, and South Korea favored a more moderate, action-for-action approach.
No one was budging.
The diplomatic outlook grew progressively more gloomy. When the time came for the fourth round of talks, North Korea refused to attend, blaming the “hostile” stance of the United States. When I visited South Korea and Japan that fall, I realized that other members of the six-party talks were also unhappy with the Americans’ hard-line approach. South Korea’s vice foreign minister attributed the problem to a difference in perspective: for the United States, he said, North Korea is just another case of WMD; whereas “for us, the North Koreans are our enemies, but also our brothers.” Japan, I was told, would prefer to start focusing on North Korea’s plutonium separation, a proliferation risk that was undisputed, and defer the issue of alleged uranium enrichment. With the IAEA out of the country, there was no “freeze” in place to prevent North Korea from reprocessing its spent fuel, separating the plutonium, and building nuclear weapons.
Toward the end of that year, I was contacted confidentially by Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico. I had known Richardson since his stint as U.S. ambassador to the UN in 1997–98, and after that when he was secretary of energy. He wanted to see whether he could mediate the situation and was interested in going to North Korea as my envoy, an unusual but acceptable proposal. He added that he would like to keep his hand in foreign policy issues, which he obviously was missing in his role as governor.
7
Since withdrawal from the NPT takes three months to go into effect, North Korea’s decision became official on April 10, 2003. Although the IAEA Board had referred the matter to the Security Council for action, the council did not issue a resolution on the matter; following its closed-door meeting on April 9, council president Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of Mexico merely told reporters that council members had “expressed their concern” and would continue to follow up on developments.
8
May 14, 2004. The discussion was moderated by Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.