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Ten days have gone by in six-party talks on North Korea¡¯s nuclear programs, but a statement of principles has yet to be signed. At issue is the scope of North Korea¡¯s nuclear dismantlement. The latest agreement drafted by China calls for North Korea to abandon all nuclear programs. Pyongyang won¡¯t sign because it insists on its right to use nuclear energy peacefully. "North Korea is neither a country defeated in war nor a criminal country,¡± said its Chief delegate Kim Kye-gwan. ¡°It's preposterous to ask such a country to suspend its peaceful nuclear project."
There is the essence of the problem, for as far as the peaceful use of nuclear energy is concerned, North Korea has committed a lot of crimes. It has rejected monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and pulled out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has not only extracted plutonium from an ostensibly peaceful nuclear reactor but also declared itself a nuclear state. Pyongyang insists that, as a sovereign country, it had every right to do these things, but by the international community's universal criteria, they represent very serious crimes indeed. Pyongyang should take a look at how embarrassed and uncomfortable South Korea was made to feel over its belatedly disclosed extraction in a laboratory of a minuscule quantity of plutonium.
The fine line between peaceful nuclear use and a weapons program lies not in a country's technological level but in its intention. There is no reason for anyone to trust North Korea not to cross that line, and for that it has only itself to blame. Pyongyang will therefore have no alternative but to start building up international trust. Let it return to the NPT and dismantle its nuclear programs with all due sincerity. If by doing so it can gain the world¡¯s trust, then it can return to using atomic energy for peaceful ends. That is the intent of the other parties in the six-country talks.
South Korea's proposal to supply the North with 200 million kilowatts of electricity is premised precisely on the North giving up construction of two light-water reactors. Even if it does not abandon them, it is in no position to keep building them on its own. Thus if it still insists, we must conclude that it is protecting a secret project to ratchet up the nuclear threat if the need arises.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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