Clinton Nuclear Deal with Pyongyang: Road Map to Progress or Dead End Street

摘要

After 17 months of tumultuous negotiations over the Pyongyang government'snuclear program, the United States and North Korea signed a detailed agreement in Geneva on October 21. The pact is a highly complex, three-staged, multilateral arrangement whose terms will not be fulfilled for many years. A consortium of nations, led by the United States, is responsible for constructing a modern nuclear power infrastructure for the well-armed, repressive communist state. The same consortium will bolster the North's faltering economy by easing its immediate energy burdens with large quantities of free fuel oil. In an October 20 letter to North Korean strongman Kim Jong II, moreover, President Clinton vastly expanded America's commitments under the formal agreement. The U.S., said Clinton, would finance the fuel shipments and the reactors if the consortium fails to do so. The total value of the U.S. pledge is estimated conservatively at more than $4 billion. In addition to leading the international energy assistance consortium, Washington has pledged to ease its long-standing trade embargo and move toward first-ever diplomatic relations with the North. These concessions provide Pyongyang a degree of political recognition by the U.S. and its allies that it long has sought. Left unaddressed is the immediate threat posed by the North's formidable conventional military force, which includes a large stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and missiles capable of reaching South Korea and Japan.