North Korea and the Chimera in the Syrian Desert

Did the month of April bring us nearer to the so-much desired grand bargain settlement on North Korea? The Singapore agreement between the US and North Korea on 8 April seemed to do so, resolving the key plutonium issue so that North Korea would disable its Yongbyon reactor and seal its plutonium wastes in preparation to handing them over, and establishing broad agreement on the size of those stocks (for North Korea, 30 kgs, which it has expressed readiness to prove by opening its records, and for the US, "between 30 and 40 kgs"). On the other issues – uranium enrichment and proliferation – North Korea would admit nothing, but the US would state its "concerns" and North Korea acknowledge them. This "declaration" process would complete the second phase of the Beijing agreement and open the path to the third and final stage - the grand peninsula settlement. The State Department mission to Pyongyang that followed was assumed to be working on the fine detail, bringing the two countries to the brink of reconciliation, and therefore offering the prospect of relief for the poor and hungry citizens of the North.

Suddenly on 24 April, however, the White House intervened to pour cold water on such hopes, accusing North Korea of nuclear proliferation by aiding Syria to construct a graphite-moderated nuclear reactor with a probable weapons purpose. Photographs (presumed to have come from Israeli intelligence) showed a building similar to Pyongyang's Yongbyon reactor. One grainy snap showed what was said to be a North Korean nuclear expert together with a Syrian colleague at the Syrian site. Experts quickly disputed the interpretation of the photographs and pointed to the US's past record of manipulation of intelligence. The intelligence in this case was anyway only "medium" as to North Korean involvement, and "low" as to weapon intent. The structure itself no longer existed, having been demolished by the Israeli air force in September 2007, so there was no material evidence. Furthermore, Syria had a legitimate nuclear program, under IAEA supervision, and cooperation with North Korean nuclear experts was not necessarily in itself suspicious. And there was uncertainty over whether an un-declared Syrian reactor project would amount to a breach of its obligations. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei thought it would but Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, argued that the Non-Proliferation Treaty guaranteed the right to a civil nuclear program with no obligation to report to the IAEA until such time as the introduction of nuclear materials was imminent.

Nevertheless, the Syrian hubbub threatened the ongoing Beijing negotiations. In place of acknowledgement without necessary admission, North Korea was now required to confess to covert nuclear proliferation - one of the most grievous of sins. Without confession, it implied, there could be no absolution.

Syria and North Korea both rejected the US claims. The US, while accusing North Korea of breach of international nuclear agreements, was protecting an Israel that refused even to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, maintained its own nuclear arsenal, and had repeatedly shown its readiness to attack any country it considered to be challenging its Middle Eastern nuclear monopoly.

Although the true nature of the mysterious Syrian desert building may never now be known, the most authoritative analysis of the evidence (by Seymour Hersh in the February 2008 issue of New Yorker) concluded that there had been "no signals intelligence, no human intelligence, no satellite intelligence," to establish that the "box in the desert" bombed by Israel was a nuclear facility. He thought the attack had most likely been designed to restore Israel's credibility following its defeat in Lebanon in 2007, and as a warning signal to Iran.

Furthermore, if the desert structure was indeed a Yongbyon-type reactor, Syria would still have somehow to obtain both the materials to operate it and the technology to process its wastes into weapons. For that, several years at minimum would still have been required. This facility was no present threat to anyone and there was no justification for the preemptive attack. Israel, with US backing, had itself committed an act of aggression.

The structure was neither concealed nor guarded, but it certainly resembled the Yongbyon facility, and Yongbyon wastes were the source of the plutonium used in North Korea's 2006 nuclear test. Yongbyon was, however, an antiquated (originally British) design, that North Korea had not wanted in the first place - Kim Il Sung is said to have been disgusted on taking delivery of it because he had desperately wanted, and believed he had been promised, the more advanced (but useless for weapon purposes) light-water model.

The Syrian affair came at a crucial stage in the negotiations on North Korea. Contrary to general understanding, North Korea has been repeatedly vindicated in its stance on key matters while the US has repeatedly shifted ground. From 2002, the US thought a covert North Korean program of HEU of such importance as to warrant bringing down the then existing Agreed Framework, provoking Pyongyang to resume its plutonium weapons work, but other countries at the Beijing forum were never persuaded of this. The US case was gradually modified to an unspecified and evidently rudimentary "enrichment program," and doubts about aluminum tubes (which the Americans had suspected of being used to manufacture centrifuges but North Korea said were from a missile factory) were cleared up after detailed US inspection late in 2007. From 2005, criminality - counterfeiting, money-laundering, and drug-running - became the key North Korean offenses. In 2007, however, North Korea's frozen funds in Macao were released and the allegation that North Korea had been manufacturing "Super Hundred" notes was dismissed by experts and the US Treasury has since gone quiet on that claim. As for narcotics, the State Department in 2008 found no evidence of "state-directed trafficking" for five years. In January 2008 the State Department's counter-terrorism section found that North Korea "seemed to have complied with the criteria needed to be removed from the US terror list."

For the Syrian proliferation issue to have been raised as it was late in April, just as other issues were resolved and with North Korea on the brink of coming in from the cold, was to repeat the common pattern of the Bush administration: that the bar be raised whenever a solution seemed imminent. South Korea's president, Lee Myung Bak, hosted by President Bush at Camp David just on the eve of this latest policy switch, must be presumed to have known of the US shift, whether or not he actively encouraged it.

The beleaguered Bush administration seemed to be either reverting to earlier "regime change" policies or possibly seeking a face-saving, diplomatic cover to allow it to claim a diplomatic triumph in East Asia to make up for the disasters elsewhere. After years of futile attempts to pin responsibility on North Korea for multiple crimes and breaches, the proliferation card, strongly urged by Israel, may have seemed the best card left. If so, North Korea now faces a risky process of plea-bargaining, being obliged to confess to something it insists it has not done in order to secure its crucial lifting of sanctions and normalization. It must also figure out whether on balance it can afford to trust a lame duck Bush administration not to shift ground again and demand even more concessions.

The crucial point is that present and future concerns be addressed without being obsessive about the past. As South Korea's ambassador to the US, Lee Tae Sik, put it: "What is important is that we secure a firm pledge from the North against nuclear proliferation." For Christopher Hill, too, the Syrian matter, whatever it was, is something past, and the Bush administration had been and would remain focused on the future. It is to be hoped he is right.