The Webfairy
US gives N. Korea money for nukes!!!
Thu Oct 17 23:41:24 2002
208.152.73.64


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1908571.stm
The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North
Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own
nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is
building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel
oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.

In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the
Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure
it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original
reactors.

President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national
security interests of the United States".

Deal under threat

North Korea has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the agreement
in recent weeks.


The row has heightened tensions on the peninsula


It has been angered by President Bush's accusation that Pyongyang was
part of an "axis of evil" producing weapons of mass destruction.

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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