This annoyance was compounded by Washington's decision to withhold this year's certification that North Korea is keeping its side of the Agreed Framework.
It has systematically refused to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into its nuclear facility at the Yongbyon research base north of the capital.
Delayed
Pyongyang has justified its refusals by pointing out that the reactors are way behind schedule.
They were originally expected to have been completed next year, but now construction is not expected to even begin until August.
Another issue is the different interpretations of the inspections' timing.
According to the Framework, North Korea should be fully compliant with IAEA safeguards when "a significant proportion" of the project is completed.
The builders say that will be around May 2005, and given the inspections will take at least three years, this means that North Korea should start admitting inspectors now.
But Pyongyang believes that they should only allow the inspections to start, rather than finish, by that date.
The head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington, a critic of the Agreed Framework, has warned that even when the new reactors are completed they may not be tamper-proof.
"These reactors are like all reactors -- **they have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we're trying to prevent it acquiring," Henry Sokolski told the Far Eastern Economic Review.
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http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/agreedframework.asp
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U.S. Obligations
- Establish and Organize KEDO: This includes the securing of diplomatic and legal rights and guarantees necessary to implement the light-water reactor project.
KEDO was established on March 9, 1995, and membership now includes 12 states and the European Union, which provide electrical-power supplies and financial assistance to help KEDO implement the Agreed Framework.
- Implement the Light-Water Reactor Project: The United States is to facilitate the construction of two 1,000-megawatt light-water nuclear power reactors.
KEDO delegated responsibility to Japan and South Korea to finance and supply North Korea with two light-water reactors. After several years of site preparation, ground was broken in August 2001 in Kumho, North Korea.
KEDO poured the concrete for the first reactor in August 2002, but suspended the project on December 1, 2003.
- Spent Fuel: The spent fuel from North Korea's 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon is to be put into containers as soon as possible (a process called "canning") and removed from the country when nuclear components for the first light-water reactor begin to arrive after North Korea has come into full compliance with IAEA safeguards.
The canning process, conducted with U.S. financing, began April 27, 1996 and was finished in April 2000. The spent fuel, however, remains in North Korea, and Pyongyang may have reprocessed it into weapons-grade
KEDO announced November 21, 2003 that it would suspend construction of the two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea for one year beginning December 1. The suspension came in response to Pyongyang’s failure to meet “the conditions necessary for continuing” the project, according to the KEDO announcement.
KEDO further stated that the project’s future “will be assessed and decided by [its] Executive Board before the expiration of the suspension period.” But a Department of State spokesperson said several days earlier that there is “no future for the project.”
The most recent nuclear crisis began when Washington announced that Pyongyang admitted during an October 4, 2002 bilateral meeting to possessing a uranium-enrichment program, which could be used to build nuclear weapons and would violate North Korea’s commitment to forgo the acquisition of such weapons. North Korea has denied that it said this. In response to the reported admission, KEDO suspended oil shipments to North Korea the next month. North Korea reacted December 12 by announcing that it would restart the nuclear facilities governed by the Agreed Framework.
After a series of exchanges with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), IAEA inspectors left the country December 31 after Pyongyang expelled them. North Korea announced on January 10, 2003 that it was withdrawing from the NPT, effective the next day. Pyongyang’s official status with the treaty remains ambiguous.
The construction of the future light-water reactors was far behind schedule. The first reactor was initially slated for completion in 2003 but was not likely to be operational until 2008 at the earliest. Numerous events—most notably North Korea’s Taepo Dong-1 missile test-firing in 1998—strained relations between Washington and Pyongyang, resulting in the construction delays.
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Rummy's North Korea Connection
What did Donald Rumsfeld know about
***ABB's deal to build nuclear reactors there?
And why won't he talk about it?
By Richard Behar
Research Associate Brenda Cherry
Fortune, May 12, 2003
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it's surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program.
What's even more surprising about Rumsfeld's silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors.
The company is Zurich-based engineering giant ABB, which signed the contract in early 2000, well before Rumsfeld gave up his board seat and joined the Bush administration. Rumsfeld, the only American director on the ABB board from 1990 to early 2001, has never acknowledged that he knew the company was competing for the nuclear contract. Nor could FORTUNE find any public reference to what he thought about the project. In response to questions about his role in the reactor deal, the Defense Secretary's spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told Newsweek in February that "there was no vote on this" and that her boss "does not recall it being brought before the board at any time."
Rumsfeld declined requests by FORTUNE to elaborate on his role. But ABB spokesman Bjorn Edlund has told FORTUNE that "board members were informed about this project." And other ABB officials say there is no way such a large and high-stakes project, involving complex questions of liability, would not have come to the attention of the board. "A written summary would probably have gone to the board before the deal was signed," says Robert Newman, a former president of ABB's U.S. nuclear division who spearheaded the project. "I'm sure they were aware."
FORTUNE contacted 15 ABB board members who served at the time the company was bidding for the Pyongyang contract, and all but one declined to comment. That director, who asked not to be identified, says he's convinced that ABB's chairman at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reactor project in the mid-1990s. "This was a major thing for ABB," the former director says, "and extensive political lobbying was done."
The director recalls being told that Rumsfeld was asked "to lobby in Washington" on ABB's behalf in the mid-1990s because a rival American company had complained about a foreign-owned firm getting the work. Although he couldn't provide details, Goran Lundberg, who ran ABB's power-generation business until 1995, says he's "pretty sure that at some point Don was involved," since it was not unusual to seek help from board members "when we needed contacts with the U.S. government." Other former top executives don't recall Rumsfeld's involvement.
Today Rumsfeld, riding high after the Iraq war, is reportedly discussing a plan for "regime change" in North Korea. But his silence about the nuclear reactors raises questions about what he did--or didn't do--as an ABB director.
