The Hindu : 'Intention not to produce weapons'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 11, 2003

International

International

'Intention not to produce weapons'

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Jan. 10. North Korea today announced its "immediate withdrawal'' from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This move was in line with Pyongyang's recent hints about such an impending action.

Today's action followed a series of steps that North Korea took in recent weeks to place itself on a trajectory out of the NPT's reach. While the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had joined the NPT in December 1985 at the behest of the former Soviet Union, Pyongyang actually pulled out of the treaty in March 1993. North Korea associated itself with the NPT for the second time after signing a deal with the U.S. in 1994.

The international community now faces a new qualitative challenge. More precisely, the tone of Pyongyang's latest statement is hardly music to the United States, which has been conspicuously portrayed by the regime of Kim Jong-Il as its new interlocutor in the place of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The DPRK today underlined that "it is totally free from the binding force of the safeguards accord''.

To soften the impact of this assertion, North Korea offered a relative conciliatory gesture with a time-specific overtone, though. The North Korean authorities, speaking through their official news agency and state television, said that "though we pull out of the NPT, we have no intention to produce nuclear weapons''. The DPRK's "nuclear activities at this stage will be confined only to peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity'', it was emphasised for greater effect.

The "production of electricity'' was the stated objective behind the North's decision last month to reactivate a 5-mw nuclear research reactor that could yield weapons-grade plutonium.

The re-commencement of work regarding the construction of other facilities at the same Yongbyon complex was also announced then in a firm repudiation of the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework of 1994.

It is in this context that diplomatic observers in the region point to the DPRK's selective pledge of staying the peaceful course "at this stage'' and not thereafter.

It is said that such a specific remark, which cannot be seen as a mere `Freudian slip', might now revive the prognosis about the "next nuclear nightmare'', a possibility that was envisioned with reference to North Korea by Leonard Spector and others in the West.

The DPRK blamed the "vicious hostile policy of the U.S.'', as directed towards the North, for today's denouement. Pyongyang rejected, too, the IAEA's `resolution' of January 6 this year on the demand that the North re-admit the nuclear weapons inspectors whom it recently expelled . North Korea's sovereignty, dignity and security were cited for the new break with the IAEA.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International

Stories in this Section

'No chance for accidental n-war with India'

'Intention not to produce weapons'

Russia, Japan tell Pyongyang to reverse decision

U.S. belligerence towards Iraq annoys Europe

Immigration: Pak. seeks U.S. exemption

Sale opposed

Pak. assails passport suspension move

'Nocturnals' disoriented