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Mr. PELL. Mr. President, North Korea's refusal to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has provoked a grave international crisis. No one should doubt the seriousness of the situation or the gravity of its test of the mettle of President Clinton and his foreign policy team. The critical nature of the dilemma, however, should not be aggravated by loose talk and false bravado.
For the past several years, under both President Bush and President Clinton, the objectives of the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] have been: first, to determine North Korea's past nuclear weapons activities, and second, to limit future North Korean weapons development.
It has become clear that North Korea's objective has been to use their apparent nuclear weapons program to gain political legitimacy in the West, principally the United States, while rebuffing pressure from the international community to end their nuclear program.
North Korea does not want its nuclear past exposed. Its decision to change fuel rods in its 5-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon at this time and in an accelerated fashion, precluded IAEA analysis, was evidently intended to keep its nuclear past cloaked in mystery. Without proper examination of the fuel rods during their withdrawal from the reactor, international experts cannot verify if North Korea withdrew plutonium at an earlier period.
We must presume the worst as long as we do not know what North Korea has done in the past. That worst, at a minimum, means as reported in the press one to two nuclear weapons.
North Korea may now consider that it has the best of both worlds. Because we do not know the extent of its nuclear arsenal, we must assume it has one, thus gaining for North Korea the attention it so obviously craves. It has served their purpose of ending their more than 40 years of diplomatic isolation. There is nothing North Korea may fear more than being ignored.
For several months, the United States has held talks with North Korea to seek their agreement to nuclear inspections by IAEA officials. I have always preferred talk to conflict, and I supported this effort, although it has not thus far achieved its stated objectives. But we must also recognize that the United States is not the only interlocutor. Regional states such as China, South Korea, and Japan all have a role as well as the United Nations, including the U.N. Command in South Korea.
In addition to the obvious threat of conflict including the use of nuclear weapons, there are three reasons why we must remain vigilant:
An active North Korean nuclear weapons program may provoke a similar response by South Korea and Japan, both of whom have remained out of the nuclear arms race;
Such a program could eventually lead North Korea to export nuclear weapons to terrorists or to rogue countries such as Libya and Iran, as North Korea now does with its conventional weapons; and
North Korea's nuclear program combined with its expanded missile program may result in a potential nuclear threat to the United States.
I am concerned that regional states do not appear to have a sufficient fear of North Korea's nuclear program. Japan is reportedly reluctant to have an embargo placed on North Korea and hesitates to curb financial remittances by Koreans residing in Japan to North Korea, although these transactions may add close to $2 billion annually to the North's reserves. While South Korea appears more concerned than Japan, they are also reluctant to provoke a confrontation which would risk a conflict, or to increase tension that could hurt their economic prosperity.
North Korea is not the only country with the potential to threaten nuclear terrorism. We urgently need to develop practical means to enforce our admirable commitment to restrain the international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The eventual threat posed by the North Korean development of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads has been monitored closely by the United States, and needs to be factored now in our strategic defense planning.
Given the dire consequences of another war on the Korean
peninsula, nuclear or conventional, I believe there are a number of measures that we should take now. These include:
Suspending bilateral talks at any level between the United States and North Korea. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N. Command in South Korea should be the principal interlocutors with the North until such time North Korean deeds match their promises in terms of compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty;
Reassessing the American military force structure in South Korea and Japan;
Moving ahead with Japan to build a theater missile defense system in the region;
Reassessing South Korean defensive capabilities to establish that they are sufficient to meet the North's threat, and to verify that their forces continue to complement United States forces in South Korea, under U.N. Command;
Working with our allies on international efforts to end trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. It is time to use all the means at our disposal to shred the veil of hypocrisy that now covers the world arms trade; and
Taking such measures, either through the United Nations or with our allies, to enforce economic sanctions on North Korea, particularly to constrain international financial transactions.
I hope that such measures would bring North Korea to its senses. If they do, and if the regime is prepared to come out of its self-imposed isolation, then there is a real possibility that peace and stability in the region can be enhanced. But they may not and I would say with all seriousness that we must prepare the American people for the possibility that force may need to be used at some time in the future to ensure our own national security, as well as that of South Korea and other countries in the region.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
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