Pyongyang's Nuke Test Sparks Fission Over Response
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UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 (OneWorld) - North Korea's nuclear weapon test has spawned widespread denunciation but the fallout also includes divergent positions on how to respond.
Some U.S. analysts and policy makers say they believe that a combination of sticks and carrots might be used to bring about a change in North Korea's nuclear behavior. Others, however, suggest that neither sanctions nor incentives will stop the spread of nuclear weapons in the world unless major nuclear powers also agree and follow a timetable for disarmament. Proponents of nuclear nonproliferation, fearful of the possibility that North Korea may transfer bomb-grade material to extremists or other countries hostile to the United States, are urging the Bush administration to devise a new diplomatic plan to deal with the regime in Pyongyang. ''The test ratchets up the need for a successful diplomatic strategy, which must include carrots as well as sticks to put an end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program,'' said Leonor Tomero of the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. Tomero described North Korea's nuclear test as a dangerous threat to stability in Northeast Asia and warned that Pyongyang's action could strengthen political elements in Japan who favor nuclear weapons buildup in their country. Indeed, Japanese officials have been quoted as expressing openness to the possibility of embracing tactical nuclear weapons after 60 years of shunning them. Japan suffered the heaviest losses to date from atomic warfare when the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki towards the end of World War II. Tomero declined to describe the specific elements of the diplomatic strategy she said was needed to stop the North Korean weapon program but others have begun to call for direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang. The Council for a Livable World, a Washington-based advocacy group, said Tuesday it was launching a two-day campaign to collect 5,000 signatures in favor of dialogue with North Korea. ''Strong international sanctions are needed in response to North Korea's nuclear test but so is strong diplomacy,'' the advocacy group said in a statement. For their part, U.S. diplomats here have repeatedly said they would like to see strong economic sanctions against Pyongyang and have brought before the Security Council a 13-point draft resolution that would do just that. Members of the U.N. General Assembly's disarmament committee, however, have assailed the exclusive focus on North Korea. Many delegates have said Pyongyang's announcement on Monday that it had conducted a nuclear test underscored the urgent need for nuclear powers to get behind the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). In 2000, delegates at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) conference called on the United States and other nuclear-weapon states to eliminate their arsenals and put forward a raft of practical disarmament measures. Those steps included entry into force of the CTBT and negotiations on an internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. Delegates noted this week that, despite taking a tough stance on nonproliferation, Washington has never indicated its willingness to endorse the CTBT. It has imposed a unilateral moratorium on testing nuclear weapons but has refused to negotiate a fissile material cut off. Thus, some analysts as well as diplomats have come to regard Washington's own nuclear behavior as partly responsible for North Korea's nuclear adventure. ''North Koreans are correct when they say they are facing nuclear threats,'' John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, told OneWorld. Burroughs criticized Pyongyang's decision to test a nuclear device but added that nobody should be surprised to learn that this was in reaction to the Bush administration's 2001 nuclear review policy, which justified the use of nuclear weapons in what it termed a preventive war. John Feffer, an analyst for the Silver City, New Mexico-based International Relations Center, added that branding North Korea as part of Bush's ''axis of evil'' and squeezing it with economic sanctions also has led to the current situation. ''Five years ago, when George W. Bush took office, North Korea didn't claim membership in the nuclear club. Its plutonium reprocessing facilities were frozen. It was even willing to negotiate away its missile program,'' Feffer said in a written assessment. ''Pyongyang has refused to cry 'uncle'. Instead, it has replied in kind. With its missile launches in July and its recently announced nuclear test, Pyongyang has demonstrated that it can be as stubborn and as enamored of military playthings as the Bush administration,'' he added. Indeed, a North Korean delegate on Monday said the response to his country's weapon test from the United States and other nuclear powers evinced ''a gangster-like logic that only big countries could posses nuclear weapons and attack and threaten small countries with them.'' ''Such a double standard reduced the NPT and other disarmament conventions to dead documents without any binding force,'' he told members of the disarmament committee. The five permanent members of the Security Council--the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China--possess thousands of nuclear weapons. While disarmament advocates said the nuclear-armed countries' condemnation of North Korea would have been more convincing had they kept nonproliferation promises made in 2000, at least one analysts saw a familiar pattern in the current outrage. ''They have all condemned the North Koreans,'' Princeton University physicist and global security expert Zia Mian said of the nuclear-armed states. ''This has been their typical response. Each time a new state has tested nuclear weapons, it is condemned then accepted and, in time, that state joins in condemning those who try to do what it did. This is the rule of the nuclear club.'' |
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