Tracking Number: 205513
Title: "Senate Panel Hears Differing Views on North Korean Threat." The November 21 House panel debate over how the US should respond to growing evidence of the success of North
Korea's efforts to attain a nuclear device was repeated four days later before the Senate panel for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. (911126)
Author: HOLDEN, ROBERT (USIA STAFF WRITER)
Date: 19911126
Text:
*EPF202
11/26/91 * SENATE PANEL HEARS DIFFERING VIEWS ON NORTH KOREAN THREAT (Hearing of Senate Foreign Relations Committee panel) (820) By Robert F. Holden USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- The November 21 House panel debate over how the United States should respond to growing evidence of the success of North Korea's efforts to build nuclear weapons was repeated four days later before the Senate panel for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
During a November 25 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, four private sector experts discussed differing options for dealing with the North Korean threat, ranging from sanctions and embargoes and blockades, to bilateral and multilateral diplomatic pressures, to U.N. inspections, to a minority view on an immediate preemptive military strike against North Korea's nuclear program facilities.
(Subcommittee Chairman Alan Cranston, Democrat of California, noted that the panel is scheduled to hear administration witnesses on the subject January 21, or even earlier if possible.)
"There is no greater threat to world security than a rogue nation like North Korea obtaining a nuclear weapon," Cranston said in his opening statement. The hearing, he said, was intended to discuss that threat and to explore multilateral and bilateral means of reducing it.
One way of reducing nuclear weapons proliferation, which Cranston admitted was probably too late to stop North Korea, is a bill authored by Senator John Glenn (Democrat of Ohio) which would impose sanctions against firms and individuals that assisted other countries in acquiring nuclear explosive devices or unsafeguarded special nuclear material. That bill, S. 1128, was reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee November 21, Cranston said.
Speaking in favor of what he called "assertive disarmament," i.e., a military strike against North Korean nuclear facilities before they become operational, Joseph Churba of the International Security Council, a Washington think-tank, dismissed the idea that further diplomatic pressure or export controls could get Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.
"Everything we know about the present Kim Il-Sung regime suggests that a nuclear weapons capability in its hands would destabilize the politics and diplomacy of East Asia,"
GE 2 EPF202 Churba said. "Moreover, this regime is likely to sell not only nuclear technology, but also plutonium to other radical, irresponsible regimes which seek to overthrow the existing nation-state system. ...This is not a scenario we need face or risk if we are prepared to take courageous steps -- today."
A preemptive non-nuclear attack against such sources of threat may seem an extreme course of action, Churba said, but it is preferable to acquiesence. "The alternative is to leave the United States and its allies open to disasters simply waiting to happen," Churba said.
A preemptive strike against North Korean nuclear facilities should be considered only as "a highly unattractive last resort," according to Leonard Spector, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The analogy of Israel's preemptive strike against the Osiraq reactor in Iraq does not apply to Korea, Spector said. Unlike Iraq in 1981, North Korea could strike back heavily against South Korea. It could easily attack Seoul with Scud missiles, some of which may have chemical warheads, he said. The North, he said, might also retaliate against South Korea's nuclear power plants, a move that could cripple the South's economic infrastructure and risk nuclear disaster.
Such a move would necessitate a costly build-up of U.S. forces in Korea, as in the Persian Gulf last year, Spector said. Finally, he said, the United States could not count on the multilateral support it enjoyed in Operation Desert Storm.
For these reasons, Spector said, every possible effort must be made to curb Pyongyang's diplomatic appetite by diplomatic means. "The Bush administration has now put into place a wide-ranging series of initiatives to achieve this result, while steadily intensifying the pressure on the DPRK," he said. "The North's initial responses have not been encouraging, but it is certainly too soon to judge the effectiveness of current U.S. efforts."
The two other witnesses, Gary Mulhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and Jeremy Stone of the Federation of American Scientists, took similar positions. Stone maintained that threatening military action against Pyongyang could lead to a full-scale war on the Korean peninsula.
Mulhollin said the best chance to get North Korea to curtail its nuclear program peacefully is to have the U.N. Security Council give Pyongyang a deadline for accepting full inspection of its facilities. "If North Korea does not respond, the Security Council should consider a trade embargo or even a blockade on shipping. Economic aid,
GE 3 EPF202 diplomatic normalization, trade in oil and other basic supplies must all be put at stake," he said.
"If all else fails, Mulhollin said, "one is left with the military option. All indications are that this would be costly." NNNN
File Identification: 11/26/91, EP-202
Product Name: Wireless File
Product Code: WF
Keywords: CONGRESS, US; KOREA (NORTH)/Defense & Military; NUCLEAR WEAPONS; ARMS
CONTROL; MISSILES; PACIFIC RIM COUNTRIES; KOREA (SOUTH)-US RELATIONS; KOREA (NORTH)-KOREA (SOUTH) RELATIONS; UNITED NATIONS-SECURITY COUNCIL
Thematic Codes: 140; 1EA; 1AC; 2FP
Target Areas: EA
PDQ Text
Link: 205513
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