It has been brought to my attention (see comments at the Marmot’s Hole) that North Korea’s reneging of the recent agreement might need to be clarified. Monday’s joint agreement states that:

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning at an early date to the treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT) and to IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards. [emphasis added]

And a bit further down:

The other parties expressed their respect and agreed to discuss at an appropriate time the subject of the provision of light-water reactor to the DPRK.

Then on Tuesday North Korea unilaterally changed the LWR issue into a precondition to implementing the other parts of the agreement:

North Korea said Tuesday it will return to the international nonproliferation regime and allow inspections by the U.N. nuclear watchdog only after receiving a light-water reactor from the United States… “…that the U.S. should not dream that the North will scrap its nuclear deterrent before providing a light-water reactor…” [emphasis added]

Here is why North Korea making the LWR issue a precondition to re-entering the NPT violates the basic premise of the agreement; while not explicit, the agreement implies some order of events – North Korea must enter the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) before discussing LWR, since no nation with nuclear know-how is going to give LWR to a nation not in the NPT as such an action would itself be a violation of the NPT. Until North Korea is a member of the NPT in good standing (i.e., observing all safeguards and IAEA instructions, etc.), no LWR. Very simple.

One would have to ignore the meaning of text of the NPT to believe that North Korea’s demand to receive a LWR before entry into the NPT is not breaking Mondays joint agreement. The sequence (NPT before LWR) is implicit, but it is there. Unless we are to undo hundreds of years of referring to previous agreements in new agreements – and not having to explicitly spell out what that means – then North Korea has clearly violated Mondays accord.

As the posts below indicate, I didn’t have much hope the deal would amount to much, although I was surprised by how quickly North Korea breached this one.