Last Thursday, while addressing at the American Enterprise Institute, Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush’s Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, stated that, “North Korea is not serious about disarming in a timely manner,” and “It is increasingly likely that North Korea will have the same nuclear status one year from now that it has today.” The Bush administration, which has traded tactics that work for the feel-good but worse-than-useless approach of the Clinton administration, was quick to refute Lefkowitz and question his knowledge of the issues.

In an obvious response to Lefkowitz’s comments, David Albright and Jacqueline Shire, both of the Institute for Science and International Security (of which Albright is president), wrote a column appearing in yesterday’s Washington Post asserting that North Korea is indeed moving forward, albeit slowly, with denuclearization. Longtime readers may remember a dispute between DPRK Studies / OneFreeKorea and Albright last year (here, here, and here).

Let’s examine their arguments:

The optimism with which the October agreement with North Korea was welcomed has faded amid accusations that the North again is not keeping its commitments. First came word that “disablement” of nuclear facilities was slowing. Then there was the missed Dec. 31 deadline for North Korea to declare the full scope of its nuclear program, including its plutonium stockpile and uranium enrichment activities. And earlier in the fall, North Korea was accused of helping Syria construct a nuclear facility in its desert, reportedly a reactor.

Nothing much to argue with here, though many with a more realistic view and understanding of North Korea’s motivations and history did not have any optimism to lose over the deal to begin with.

The finger-wagging, told-you-so naysayers in and out of the Bush administration should take a deep breath. There is no indication that North Korea is backing away from its commitments to disable key nuclear facilities and every reason to expect this process to unfold slowly, with North Korea taking small, incremental steps in return for corresponding steps from the United States and others in the six-party discussions.

The assertions above amount to wishes more than factual statements. In order to avoid redundancy, “why?” will be explained in following, related comments.

Disablement of the five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon slowed in part because the United States decided that unloading the irradiated fuel rods as fast as North Korea proposed could needlessly risk exposing the North Korean workers to excessive radiation. North Korea is unloading the rods and making steady progress on the other aspects of disablement at the Yongbyon site. Could it be happening faster? Probably, and North Korea would point out that promised shipments of heavy fuel oil are also slow in coming.

Likely fair points, though North Korea can and has moved swiftly with such processes in the past. A few grains of truth help with the overall spin.

North Korea’s nuclear declaration was to be received by Dec. 31. On Jan. 2, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the United States was still “waiting to hear” from the North. Pyongyang responded that the United States had its declaration. After some tail-chasing, it emerged that North Korea had quietly shared an initial declaration with the United States in November. According to media reports, this declaration stated that North Korea had a separated plutonium stockpile of 30 kilograms and denied that it had a uranium enrichment program.

North Korea said it delivered, “a nuclear report in November and ha[d] notified the United States of it,” and that the report fulfilled its obligation under the agreement to provide a full nuclear declaration. Christopher Hill, however, has explicitly denied that the U.S. received even a draft. Others have suggested that when the administration realized the report provided by North Korea fell short of meeting the declaration requirements, it was deemed best to dismiss it and seek another in order to maintain momentum in the Six-Party process.

It seems that North Korea did deliver a document of some sort, one that fell far short of what was required, perhaps not including data that the U.S. was aware of and knew would be in an accurate report. Hardly an indication that North Korea is not, “backing away from its commitments.”

Does this quantity of separated plutonium make sense? Yes. In short, 30 kilograms is at the lower end of the range of plutonium that we have assessed North Korea could have separated. This estimate is based on what we know about how long its reactor operated to build up plutonium in the fuel rods and how much plutonium was chemically extracted from this fuel at the nearby reprocessing plant.

No argument. An indication of moving forward, however, would be if North Korea allowed inspections in to evaluate and search for data that could confirm or deny their claims, if possible at this point. But that has not happened.

What about any enriched uranium? There is no question that North Korea has committed to providing the other nations in the six-party discussions with information about its uranium enrichment efforts and should be held to that commitment. But we should not lose sight of an uncomfortable fact — that U.S. policymakers misread (at best) or hyped information that North Korea had a large-scale uranium enrichment program. There is ample evidence that North Korea acquired components for a centrifuge-enrichment program, but few now believe the North produced highly enriched uranium or developed its enrichment capabilities in the manner once claimed by the United States.

The success or failure of this latest agreement with North Korea must not hinge on the uranium issue. This is an interesting and relevant part of its nuclear program, but it is still a footnote in the context of its plutonium production.

Albright, however, also does not know the scale of North Korea’s HEU program. Yes, North Korea has admitted to having a pilot HEU program that did not produce anything, and procuring equipment for such (which was already known, back when North Korea was denying the very existence of such a program, past or present). Even Roh’s NIS admitted that North Korea had a HEU program.

The assertion that the HEU portion of the declaration should not be a show stopper is dangerous and misleading. Unlike plutonium enrichment, uranium enrichment would be much easier for North Korea to conceal. And HEU weapons are, generally speaking, less difficult to build than plutonium ones. An accurate and full declaration to include HEU is in fact critical.

Reports that North Korea has cooperated with Syria on a hidden nuclear program are troubling but must also be kept in context and, until additional information is available, should not be allowed to undermine the agreement. . .

Agreed. Though the dealings are suspicious, so far no credible nuclear link has been publicly established.

North Korea is looking to the United States to keep its promises on delisting it as a terrorist state. Unfortunately, given the climate in Washington and the perception that North Korea is slow-rolling the declaration process, this is unlikely over the near term. Pyongyang should be realistic in its expectations.

North Korea has not made any changes to warrant being delisted. Nor has North Korea complied fully with any past agreement. Technically, North Korea has reneged on the current agreement.

For Washington, and the unfairly maligned advocates of the six-party process, the task is to maintain laser-like focus on taking the next step toward fulfillment of the October agreement, with the goal of moving to the disarmament phase, and not allowing these hard-won steps to be drowned out by the noise of detractors.

North Korea’s track record is flawless: it has broken each and every nuclear deal and agreement it has agreed to. The logic behind believing North Korea wants to give up nuclear weapons, not so flawless. Let’s see a year from now who is right; Lefkowitz or the apologists. Anyone taking bets?