How to Be Weapon-Ready NPT Members

WASHINGTON: Iran's and North Korea's clever manipulation of their rights to exploit nuclear energy under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a party and which North Korea may rejoin, together with deep difference among the Western powers and their partners, have put new obstacles in the path of efforts to rein in the nuclear weapons capabilities of the two states. If the United States and other parties cannot find greater unity in curbing the nuclear ambitions of the two countries, which President George W. Bush termed members of the "axis of evil," the nuclear weapon potential of both may grow unchecked.

Whether coordinated or not, both North Korea and Iran have resisted the effort to end their weapons-relevant nuclear activities by claiming the right of peaceful use of nuclear energy granted to NPT members. This, despite the fact that Iran – an NPT member – carried on clandestine efforts to enrich uranium, and North Korea – having withdrawn from the NPT – now processes enough plutonium to make six to eight bombs. Faced with these tactics, the international efforts to obtain nuclear constraints appeared to be losing cohesion.

The most disturbing setback was Iran's decision to restart certain uranium enrichment activities, which it had previously agreed to freeze for the duration of negotiations with Britain, France, and Germany. Iran claims to be developing a uranium enrichment capability to provide fuel for future nuclear power plants – an acceptable practice for NPT members. But the claim sounds dubious, as at present, it has no power plants on order and only one under construction: the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear reactor, which will receive the necessary fuel from Russia.

Because the same technology needed to produce low-enriched uranium for nuclear power plants can also produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, the West believes that Iran intends to use this capability to stockpile weapons-usable nuclear materials. Iran might then suddenly withdraw from the NPT and be within months of having a nuclear arsenal. Indeed, a leading hard-line Iranian newspaper last week called for Tehran to leave the pact. Underlying Western concerns is the fact that Iran pursued its uranium enrichment work in secret for some 18 years, failing both to declare this to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to submit key activities for IAEA monitoring, per NPT requirements.

As part of an IAEA-endorsed understanding with the Europeans, Iran had agreed in November 2004 to freeze all uranium-enrichment related activities, including the conversion of uranium oxide powder into uranium hexafluoride gas, the feedstock for the enrichment process. In early August, however, Iran announced its plan to restart uranium conversion at its plant in Isfahan, and, on August 8, it did so, while permitting IAEA inspections to continue.

The move, at the direction of the country's newly elected, hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejed, appeared to be a gambit by Iran to pressure the British, French, and German negotiating team to improve the economic and diplomatic incentives they have offered Iran, if it agrees to end its uranium enrichment plans and parallel efforts to develop the ability to produce plutonium (the second material that can be used for nuclear weapons). On August 7, Iran dismissed the latest European proposal as having "no value," because it failed to recognize Iran's legal right to enrich uranium.

Ahmadinejed may also be testing the resolve of the Europeans and the United States. The Europeans had made clear to Iran in November that they would immediately urge referral of Iran's years of noncompliance with the NPT to the UN Security Council if Iran deviated in any way from the freeze agreement. However, when the IAEA Board of Governors convened in special session on August 11, it gave Iran only the mildest slap on the wrist, "urging" it to restore the suspension of uranium conversion activities.

Developing countries members, in particular, balked at taking the matter to the Security Council, apparently sympathizing with Iran's invocation of its "inalienable right" under the NPT to exploit nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The recent revelation about a US Intelligence estimate that Iran was likely to be unable to produce nuclear weapons for 10 years has further diluted the sense of urgency about its nuclear ambitions.

In the North Korean talks, Pyongyang's right to pursue the peaceful uses of nuclear energy also emerged, unexpectedly, as a new issue – and also became a source of division among those pressing for nuclear restraint. The surprising development came after the second-term Bush foreign policy team revised the US hard-line approach to the negotiations. On the eve of the July round of Six-Party Talks, apparently with Washington's blessing, South Korea offered a significant new inducement to Pyongyang in return for its elimination of its nuclear weapons program: 2,000 megawatts of desperately needed electricity, to be produced in the South and sent north through the interconnection of the two countries' electric power grids.

During the talks, however, North Korea declared that the South Korean electricity assistance offer was inadequate. Instead, it demanded that its right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes be included in the meeting's final communiqué – a stance the United States rejected. As a result, no final statement was issued.

The demand appeared to hint that North Korea sought to restart construction of two nuclear power plants in Sinpo, North Korea. This construction, previously allowed as part of a 1994 US-North Korea accord, was cancelled in 2003, following the revelation that North Korea, while freezing its activities related to plutonium production, had secretly launched a program to produce highly enriched uranium. Thereafter, in late 2002, North Korea withdrew from the NPT, restarted plutonium production, and increased its presumed nuclear arsenal from two to as many as eight weapons. Despite this history – and to Washington's consternation – a senior South Korean official declared on August 11 that North Korea did indeed have the right to exploit peaceful nuclear energy once it rejoined the NPT and eliminated its nuclear weapons program – the very position the US had publicly rejected only a day earlier.

The seeming split between South Korea and the United States, coupled with long-standing differences in the approaches favored by China, Japan, and Russia, suggest that, when the talks resume in late August, disarray among North Korea's negotiating partners will give that country new bargaining leverage. Seen with Tehran's new assertiveness and the associated divisions within the IAEA Board of Governors, prospects for restraining dangerous nuclear activities in Iran and North Korea may be more distant today than when the summer began. Meanwhile, Washington's lifting of a 25-year prohibition on transfers of civilian nuclear equipment and materials to India, a declared nuclear weapon state, is unlikely to encourage restraint on the part of Iran or North Korea.

Not surprising that in this international context of disarray and confusion, Iran and North Korea want to have their NPT cake and eat it too, complying with the letter of the pact, but keeping their options open.