No More Cat-and-Mouse : The time has come to establish North Korea’s true intentions

No, the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear development program is not over, former President Jimmy Carter’s optimistic statement notwithstanding. At best--and that qualifier needs underlining--Carter’s “unofficial” but Administration-sanctioned meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung last week may have provided a fresh chance to test how serious Pyongyang is about swapping its nuclear weapons ambitions for greatly expanded trade, aid and the visible signs of international respectability.

Over the next few days U.S. and North Korean diplomats will probably explore that chance in conversations at U.N. headquarters in New York. Meanwhile, Carter’s uninhibitedly upbeat praise for Kim Il Sung’s intentions has for now stopped dead the Clinton Administration’s effort to build a consensus in the U.N. Security Council for its sanctions resolution against North Korea.

It wouldn’t hurt at this point to review again what this still very active crisis is all about. Washington believes that North Korea has secretly reprocessed enough weapons-grade plutonium to build one or two nuclear weapons, in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Last month International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors once more visited Pyongyang in hopes of examining fuel rods from a nuclear reactor to see whether plutonium had in fact been extracted from some of them. North Korean authorities frustrated that work, and Pyongyang announced it was quitting the IAEA and would treat any sanctions against it as an act of war.

Now, says Carter, North Korea is in a conciliatory mood. It proposes a presidential summit meeting with South Korea, which Seoul has accepted, and says if Washington resumes high-level talks it will freeze its nuclear program. Washington says fine, but on these conditions: that North Korea not extract any more plutonium from the fuel rods it removed from its reactor last month; that it not refuel the reactor; and that it allow international monitors to resume their jobs on-site.

These are reasonable if minimal conditions, but they still leave unanswered the key questions of whether Pyongyang earlier diverted plutonium and how much. A lot of security concerns--for the United States, for South Korea, for Japan--ride on the answers to those questions.

Any renewed dialogue with North Korea must aim at determining quickly whether Pyongyang is truly interested in normalizing its relations with the United States and others or whether its real priority is to arm itself with nuclear weapons as it goes on trying to fool the IAEA, Washington and wide-eyed visitors about its intentions. The cat-and-mouse game has to end. One way or another, the time to draw firm conclusions has come.