Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=DECEMBER 30, 2002

TYPE=FOCUS

NUMBER=8-060

TITLE= AXIS OF EVIL WEAPONRY

BYLINE=ED WARNER

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: While the United States prepares for possible war with Iraq, two other axis of evil states, as defined by President Bush, are making alarming moves. North Korea quite clearly and Iran more obscurely are advancing their nuclear weapons programs in defiance of U-S policy. That presents the Bush administration with a strategic dilemma, to which it has so far offered no clear-cut response. VOA's Ed Warner asks prominent weapons analysts how they assess the situation.

TEXT: Concentrating on a possible war with Iraq, the Bush administration was caught by surprise when North Korea announced it was resuming its nuclear weapons program. The nation called a rogue by the Clinton administration and evil by the Bush team is capable of building a small nuclear arsenal in a short period of time. The International Atomic Energy Agency accuses North Korea of nuclear brinkmanship.

Even so, the Bush administration continues to call Iraq the greater danger and proceeds with its military build-up in the Persian Gulf. Others disagree. Joseph Biden, outgoing Democratic chairman of the U-S Senate foreign relations committee, says North Korea is now the bigger worry.

U-S Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says if necessary, the United States can fight a two-front war against both Iraq and North Korea. Many U-S military analysts say this cannot be done with current manpower and resources.

Joseph Cirincione, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says North Korea is well on its way to acquiring nuclear weapons.

CIRINCIONE ACT

Unlike Iraq, North Korea actually has plutonium. They apparently have started a uranium enrichment program, which triggered this crisis anew. They have the material you need to make a nuclear bomb. We do not know if they have actually made those bombs, and now they are steadily unfreezing the nuclear weapons production facilities that they had frozen in 1994 in an agreement with the United States government.

END ACT

Mr. Cirincione notes the critical timing of the North Korean move. The communist nation that was established at the end of World War Two by Josef Stalin may be a rogue. It may be evil, but its leaders appear to have a strategy.

CIRINCIONE ACT

They are driven by their own internal security dynamics, but there is no doubt that North Korea is aware that while the United States is so heavily focused on and committed to Iraq, it has more maneuvering room. So I do not think it is a coincidence that they are taking these steps now.

END ACT

Yet all is not lost, says Mr. Cirincione. North Korea may want to use its nuclear capability as a bargaining chip with the United States. Economic aid may be more important to the hard-pressed, isolated regime than advanced weaponry.

CIRINCIONE ACT

Unlike Iraq, however, North Korea wants to negotiate with the United States. The whole purpose of their unveiling these plans, of taking these steps is in their own strange way to force the United States back to the negotiating table. This country wants to make a deal. We know that we can, to be blunt, buy their nuclear and ballistic missile program. All we have to do is negotiate the price.

END ACT

Kurt Gottfried is chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists and professor of physics at Cornell University. He says North Korea is as mysterious as it is unpredictable. But he agrees the need for economic help may lie behind its nuclear threat. And let's not exaggerate that, he cautions.

GOTTFRIED ACT

It is still a very minor nuclear power, of course, even if it has a couple of weapons. I think the most important threat that North Korea poses is the huge conventional army that it has within reach of Seoul, which greatly limits what the administration can do in comparison to what it thinks it can do in Iraq.

END ACT

North Korea is also said to be emboldened by the recent election of South Korean President Rob Moo Hyun, who campaigned for re-engagement with the north. Anti-Americanism is increasing in South Korea with surveys showing people as skeptical of the United States as they are of North Korea.

The Bush Administration insists it will not be blackmailed into negotiating with North Korea. But Republican Senator Richard Lugar, incoming chairman of the foreign relations committee, says Washington will have to talk to North Korea and remain heavily engaged in the region.

The recent discovery of two large nuclear installations in Iran was another jolt to the United States. Iran says it needs nuclear energy to generate electricity and is willing to let the International Atomic Energy Agency inspect the facilities. But the United States says a country with so much oil does not have to resort to nuclear energy. Weapons, says Washington, are the apparent object.

Last August, the National Council of the Resistance of Iran, a controversial but active opposition group, revealed the secret nuclear projects. Spokesman Alireza Jafar-Zadeh says the mullahs run the facilities under cover of conventional companies.

JAFAR-ZADEH ACT

They found out that all the overt, open contracts they had made with a number of governments, such as the Russians and the Chinese, to have nuclear power plants installed in Iran, were eventually canceled due to international pressure. So they pursued this new approach of camouflaging everything, doing as little as they can in terms of official contracting and then get the expertise and resources in these countries through these fake companies they have put together.

END ACT

Joseph Cirincione says the Iranian effort to acquire nuclear weapons may prove stronger than the North Korean. Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers India and Pakistan on one side, Israel on the other.

CIRINCIONE ACT

If Iran proceeds to develop a nuclear weapon, there may be nothing that the United States or other countries can do to dissuade them from that. They feel that their security is in jeopardy and that they may need a nuclear weapon some time in the future to protect their security, just as the United States says it needs nuclear weapons to protect its security.

END ACT

That is why current U-S policy may be driving rather than deterring nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, says Frank von Hippil, co-director of the program on science and global security at Princeton University.

VON HIPPIL ACT

It may be stimulating them. They may feel that while we are focused on Iraq, they better get as far as they can because they may be next. I think that certainly is a genuine fear in the case of North Korea and also in the case of Iran. Being labeled the axis of evil is not very reassuring.

END ACT

The third and most threatened member of the axis of evil is itself no nuclear threat, says Joseph Cirincione. We await any evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Even if there is one, it could not be functioning now because of all the inspectors swarming over the country.

CIRINCIONE ACT

Those inspectors alone prevent him from any ongoing chemical or biological or nuclear weapons activity. If he does have hidden stockpiles of weapons, given enough time and resources, the inspectors can find them. Because of the security council policies and the President's focus on Iraq, Iraq is at this point the least dangerous situation of the three so-called axis of evil countries.

END ACT

The real nuclear threat lies elsewhere, says Professor Gottfried. Terrorists seek the most available weapons, which happen to be in the country that has rivaled the United States in their production.

GOTTFRIED ACT

The greatest danger in my opinion is the huge stockpile of nuclear materials and weapons in the former Soviet Union, to which we are paying considerable attention. But it is still not anywhere near the attention that it deserves. If you are talking about nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists, I think the most likely source for an actual weapon would be from Russia.

END ACT

Nuclear dangers come from a number of directions, says Professor Gottfried. It is crucial to judge the most important ones.

For Focus, this is Ed Warner