North Korea handed over more than 18,000 pages of nuclear weapons documents to a U.S. diplomat visiting Pyongyang on Thursday that will help verify its plutonium holdings, senior U.S. officials said.

[…]

“We will see if these documents will play a role in that process, but again it is going to be a verification process that plays out over a period of time,” [McCormak] said. “Our top three priorities are going to be verification, verification and verification,” he added.

[…]

A sticking point has been Pyongyang’s reluctance to discuss any transfer of nuclear technology to other countries, notably Syria, as well as its suspected pursuit of uranium enrichment.

It’s important to note that documents without physical access to all related facilities does not equal verification; unfettered access is needed.

As the article notes, there are two gaping knowledge gaps; the uranium program and nuclear proliferation to Syria. The U.S. should not accept any declaration that does not thoroughly address those two issues. Luckily for the American people, some in congress are at least raising awareness of the real possibility of the Bush administration doing worse than the Clinton legacy.

The 1994 Agreed Framework (PDF) Article III, section 2 states:

The DPRK will consistently take steps to implement the North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. (emphasis added)

So, the 1994 Agreed Framework references another agreement. The 1992 Joint Declaration (DOC) states in Article 3:

The South and the North shall not possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities. (emphasis added)

Although it is not explicitly stated in the 1994 Agreed Framework, through referencing the 1992 Joint Declaration, uranium enrichment facilities – and therefore uranium enrichment – are implicitly prohibited by the 1994 Agreed Framework.

An example would be if one signed a contract and agreed to abide by certain regulations. Those regulations are not spelled out explicitly in the contract, but are implicitly included through the reference. Violation of those regulations would put one in violation of the contract, even if those regulations were not specifically spelled out in the contract.

I’m not sure, after reading these agreements, how someone could attempt to say a uranium enrichment program wasn’t forbidden by the 1994 Agreed Framework. But some still do, amazingly.

North Korea has tentatively agreed to give the United States thousands of records from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor dating back to 1990 to complement an expected declaration of its nuclear programs, administration and congressional officials said yesterday.

That is very nice, but I am more concerned with what North Korea is still not offering up; 1) what’s actually called for in the deal - a full and complete nuclear declaration; 2) unfettered access (including material samples) to all known and suspected nuclear facilities; 3) information and materials to ascertain the true status of North Korea’s uranium program, including the equipment known to have been sent from Pakistan, and the fate of some thousands of aluminum tubes purchased by North Korea.

Without those items, this offer of records is just a bait and switch.

The Unification Ministry has adjusted the content of unification education for both adults and students with President Lee Myung-bak’s North Korea policy, emphasizing the importance of national security and North Korea’s human rights issues.

Some left-leaning lecturers, who have been slammed for propagating distorted views on North Korea for the past decade, are going to be replaced and textbooks describing North Korea’s history in a positive tone revised.

[…]

The Education Center for Unification under the Unification Ministry has reinforced the content of unification education, aiming at instilling in adults the importance of national security focusing on North Korea’s nuclear issue and the relation between South Korea and the United States and informing them of North Korea’s human rights abuses, according to some participants of the meeting.

Now the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) has revealed that North Korea was assisting Syria in a program to obtain Plutonium at the Al-Kibar facilty. Even though any assistance for any nuclear-related project is another clear violation of UNSCR 1718, the Bush administration is unlikely to halt agreements related to the Six-Party Talks as it is in full Legacy Mode.

The following is a clip of CIA video (11 min 38 sec) presented to congress on Friday (via Arms Control Wonk):

A nuclear power plant is not a nuclear weapons program. However, several details indicate the Syrian plant was in fact meant for a plutonium based nuclear weapons program:

• The reactor design was nearly identical to the antiquated graphite-moderated reactor located at Yongbyon in North Korea, and North Korean scientists and technicians were known to have been involved in the Syrian project. As the video states, only North Korea has constructed this type of reactor in the past 35 years.
• The reactor would have produced Plutonium 239 (Pu-239), which is used in the production of implosion nuclear weapons (e.g. the “Fat Man” atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki, 09 August 1945).
• The reactor was not configured to deliver electric to the Syrian electrical grid.
• The reactor was built in secret, in violation of agreements with the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
• Note that no Plutonium reprocessing facilities were yet constructed. This is not surprising since the reactor was not yet producing Plutonium to reprocess.

David Albright, of Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), has downplayed IC claims that the facility in Al-Kibar was related to a nuclear weapons program because, “The United States and Israel have not identified any Syrian plutonium separation facilities or nuclear weaponization facilities.” This, despite the secrecy of the program (and in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty), the fact that the reactor was not configured for electricity production or deliver to the Syrian electric grid, and the fact that reprocessing and weaponization would come only after the plant was successful. Once again Albright plays apologist to a regime bent on obtaining nuclear weapons.

Syria was foolish for thinking it could hide such a facility under the gaze of Israel. North Korea was foolish for thinking it could conceal its involvement in nuclear proliferating. But perhaps both will have the last laugh as the Bush administration is so focused on obtaining a pseudo denuclearization agreement from North Korea that it will let this slide. If so, this Bush administration will have done much more damage to our security than even the Clinton administrations ignoring the problem in the late 1990s.

See related posts at OneFreeKorea and ROK Drop.

While I thought it was the right thing to do (and believe we should never have lifted the related sanctions on North Korean banking), from a policy coordination standpoint, it seemed that the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing when it came to U.S. policy on North Korea.

Now there seems to be similar lack of coordination, or perhaps a behind-the-scenes struggle between the Department of State and the Intelligence Community over what North Korea policy ought to be.

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