Down the Risky Path

By Bruce W. Nelan

Bill Clinton went to Europe last week to honor the brave men and decisive leaders who made D-day a great victory 50 years ago. At ceremonies in Italy, Britain and France, he basked in the symbolism of past wartime glory, dining with royalty and renewing links with leaders of the Atlantic alliance that had its roots in World War II. But all the grand remembrance could not keep his focus entirely on the battles of what is often called the last good war. North Korea was forcing him to recall one of the bad ones -- the Korean War of 1950-53, in which 2 million soldiers and 2 million civilians on both sides were killed. The same leader, Kim Il Sung, still rules in Pyongyang, and he was sounding no less aggressive now than he had been then.

Though the Stalinist dictator has been playing a complicated game of nuclear now-you-see-it, now-you-don't for the past two years, both leaders raised the anxiety level a few notches last week. After North Korea's nuclear technicians blocked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from verifying whether Pyongyang has already secretly diverted enough plutonium for a bomb or two, Clinton for the first time asked the U.N. Security Council to take up the issue of economic sanctions. In the past, North Korea has vowed to consider sanctions an act of war, a pledge that will surely be on the minds of council members as they discuss whether to try to coerce Pyongyang into compliance with the rules of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Behind a smoke screen of diplomacy and bluster, Kim Il Sung may have produced at least one atom bomb; the CIA says the odds are "better than even" that he has. Last week he gave signs that he might be gathering plutonium to produce five others, and even more when a new and larger reactor begins operating next year. In that case, would Clinton use force to uphold the policy of nuclear nonproliferation, or would North Korea resort to war to preserve its right to have the Bomb?

If the standoff with North Korea worsens over the next few weeks, Bill Clinton will be facing the biggest crisis of his presidency, the kind of crisis, in fact, that he so far has shown little aptitude for handling well. After 18 months of Clinton's vacillation and weakness toward Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia, Americans and their allies have sufficient reason to be concerned. Though Kim Il Sung has not explicitly said he would respond to sanctions by invading South Korea, it is a chilling fact that he did invade once before. For his part, Clinton has vowed that North Korea cannot be allowed to acquire an atomic arsenal. A nuclear-armed Pyongyang could not only frighten Japan and South Korea into building the Bomb but also might be willing to sell atomic weapons to any rogue states that would pay, such as Iran and Libya.

In the U.S. last week, foreign affairs experts like former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and Senator John McCain voiced their exasperation with the North. They insisted that the regime's latest violations had gone beyond the realm of diplomatic debate, and they called for tough sanctions against Pyongyang and preparations for war if necessary. If the North's nuclear program is not stopped, declared Eagleburger, there will be no hope of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons in the world, and "it ought to scare the pants off everybody." Said McCain: "The only thing that convinces people like Kim Il Sung is the threat of force and extinction, and that has to be implicit in the enactment of sanctions."

A surprising number of Americans agree. A new TIME/CNN poll shows that 80% of respondents favored economic sanctions if Pyongyang continued to restrict inspections. By 46% to 40%, they approved U.N. military action against the nuclear facilities. As tensions with North Korea began to look serious, members of Congress worried aloud about the safety of the 35,000 troops deployed in the South, along with their 11,000 dependents. They and hundreds of thousands of Koreans could die if the adversaries launch -- or blunder into -- another war.

The first act of the drama is now over. Since the IAEA began poking into North Korea's nuclear facilities in May 1992, its primary goal has been to find out how much plutonium, an essential material required for weapons, has come out of the 5-megawatt research reactor in Yongbyon. Specifically, inspectors want to know how much plutonium the Koreans may have spirited away when the reactor was shut down for 100 days in 1989, before the inspections began, to discover whether Kim has the Bomb.

The Koreans have insisted all along that their nuclear program is peaceful and that no plutonium has been diverted. Last week they made it almost, though not quite, impossible for the inspectors to prove otherwise. They extracted most of the 8,000 fuel rods, and U.S. officials fear that in some cases, rods from different parts of the reactor were shuffled together before being cooled in water-filled ponds. If, in the future, inspectors could analyze a large sample of them, they might come up with approximate readings of plutonium output, but they could not know the reactor's production history with complete certainty. "It is too late," insisted Hans Blix, head of the IAEA. "We cannot exclude ((the possibility)) that material has been diverted."

Now the next act begins. Even if some plutonium was diverted in 1989, it was enough for no more than one or two bombs. The fuel rods Pyongyang has just removed from the reactor will have to cool for about a month. After that, if the North Koreans reprocess them, they will remove all evidence of past extractions and, more important, acquire enough plutonium for five additional bombs.

So far, there is no signal that they plan to do that. The fuel rods in the cooling ponds are still being monitored by two IAEA inspectors and automatic cameras at Yongbyon. The catch is that North Korea has threatened to withdraw entirely from the nonproliferation treaty if the U.N., or the U.S. unilaterally, imposes sanctions. That would defeat Clinton's purpose, since it would mean the end of all inspections, no matter how imperfect. Washington would have to assume that Pyongyang was reprocessing the plutonium to build bombs. Pressure would increase to pile on the sanctions and begin reinforcing South Korea to defend against a possible retaliatory onslaught from the North. A cycle of response and reprisal could spiral out of control.

Yet sanctions may never be imposed. They were put on the Security Council agenda when a letter from Blix declared his inspection had been stymied. In Europe, Clinton observed that the inspection battle was five years old. Now, he said, "North Korea's actions have made it virtually imperative that the Security Council consider sanctions." But, he added, "I do not want a lot of saber rattling over this." That was not quite a ringing call for action, but U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright said she would immediately start consulting with other members of the Security Council about "the timing, the objectives and the substance of a sanctions resolution in the near future."

But the day after Clinton's call for sanctions, an unnamed official traveling with the President seemed to try to tone down the Commander in Chief's message. "We're not at the point of no return," the aide said. "It's a serious situation but not a crisis." If those words were intended to mean that perhaps sanctions wouldn't be necessary, they were yet another example of the Clinton Administration's difficulty in getting the tone and pitch just right in the delicate dialogue of international diplomacy.

Those consultations are certain to lead to a great deal of discussion, with a very uncertain outcome. China, longtime ally of Communist North Korea, is not in favor of mounting any economic pressure. "At this time," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang, "we do not favor resorting to means that might sharpen the confrontation." Said a senior U.S. official: "It's in the interest of the Chinese to influence the North Koreans, short of sanctions."

In Moscow, President Boris Yeltsin told visiting South Korean President Kim Young Sam he would consider approving an embargo if diplomatic efforts failed. But his first choice was a summit meeting in which the inspection issue would be negotiated -- and Russia could win some international prestige. The U.S. insists that the Security Council is the appropriate forum for such discussions.

In light of Pyongyang's war talk, Washington plans a series of steps aimed at cutting off the North Koreans' international trade and commercial contacts, in hopes of slowly pressuring Pyongyang to return to proper inspection. One central element will be an effort to halt transfer payments to people in the North of up to $1 billion a year from Koreans living in Japan. This is a major source of hard currency for Pyongyang, and could provoke retaliation. The more likely a sanction is to hurt the North, the more likely it could goad them into lashing back with missile bombardments across the border, terrorist raids or even a full-scale attack.

The sanction that would most undercut the Kim regime is also the most provocative: an oil embargo. North Korea imports almost 75% of its petroleum products from China. If oil were cut off, the army would stop running. But China frowns on sanctions of any sort, and would hardly agree to halt the petroleum flow. Even if Beijing ordered a cutoff, Chinese businessmen along the long border are doing such a profitable business with North Korea that they might be inclined to ignore the embargo order.

After all these months, the West has little idea what Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il, the designated successor, are up to. Are they bent on extorting the best combination of diplomatic and economic benefits for a pledge of good behavior, or are they simply determined to build an atomic arsenal? Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, argues, "The North Koreans want a face-saving way out of the corner into which they have painted themselves." He thinks the U.S. ought to specify exactly what benefits the North will reap if it gives up its nuclear program and also reassure the Kims that they will be allowed to survive. If striking a deal with the West is their plan, they will be able to prove it by not withdrawing from the nonproliferation treaty as the sanctions campaign gets under way and by allowing the IAEA to keep tabs on the fuel rods.

But if they refuse, they will bolster the case of the naysayers. These experts say the communist Kims are poor and isolated. They have lost most of their supporters in the world, are crunched up against giant Russia and China, and cannot hope to match South Korea's economic performance. All they have to defend their regime and their own grip on power is the nuclear program, which is popular at least with the armed forces, and they do not propose to give it up.

Michael Armacost, a former U.S. ambassador to Japan who is now a visiting professor at Stanford University, does not believe the Kims are working on a deal. "I've never been fully convinced," he says, "that people invest that much money and effort in a program they're going to bargain away." The diplomatic fog, he thinks, has all been cover for a determined bomb program. Norman Levin, a senior analyst at the Rand Corp., believes North Korea is bargaining, but not about economic aid or diplomatic recognition. The issue is securing the succession of Kim Jong Il, who does not have the popular following or revolutionary credentials of his father. But, says Levin, if the younger Kim "outsmarts the Americans and keeps the nukes, it would be a great victory for his legitimacy."

Perhaps the best-informed analysis comes from a Western diplomat who recently visited Pyongyang and talked with senior government officials including members of the Kim family. This diplomat describes the North Korean attitude as a siege mentality, desperate to maintain itself, fearful of attack. He does not think Kim Il Sung is looking for an economic payoff or playing a self-aggrandizing game of brinkmanship. Rather he is obsessed with assuring the survival not just of the regime but also of the very country he created. The diplomat compares Kim's quest for nuclear power with French President Charles de Gaulle's determination to have his own nuclear force de frappe. Kim, says the diplomat, is "building the Bomb to guarantee his independence."

If Kim really believes his survival is at stake, what can the U.S. and the U.N. do to make him halt his nuclear program? Possibly nothing. Kim must be aware that the West's demands will not stop once he ends production. Seung Soo Han, South Korea's ambassador to the U.S., says that his government is as intent on learning whether the North already has the plutonium for a bomb as in stopping Pyongyang from making new weapons. "Our ultimate aim," he says, "is to make the Korean peninsula nuclear free."

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gallucci, who has been handling negotiations with the North, lists even more specific demands. The U.S. will require Pyongyang's full adherence to the nonproliferation treaty's terms, including special inspections of suspect sites and a ban on all reprocessing of nuclear fuels. Then, if the talks turn to diplomatic recognition, the U.S. will want political changes, like improvements in North Korea's respect for human rights.

Most experts say Kim is not crazy, but shrewd and calculating. He may not risk destruction by launching a war, but he may not give in to sanctions either.

If the U.N. or the U.S. succeeds in imposing a sanctions regime, it will have to remain in place for a long time, until the Kims, their government and Stalinism in North Korea have died out. In Europe, Clinton was reviewing options with his foreign policy aides, trying to anticipate moves for next week and next month. If Kim Il Sung is staking the survival of his regime and his nation on the building of a nuclear arsenal, sanctions are not likely to change his course. And for Bill Clinton and the other world leaders who see nuclear proliferation as a deadly peril to the world, the costs of backing away from the effort to stop North Korea would be enormous.

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CREDIT:TIME Diagram by Joe Lertola

CAPTION:RIDDLE OF THE RODS

1. The North Korean 5-MW nuclear reactor at Yongbyon has about 8,000 uranium fuel rods. Plutonium is created as a by-product of the reactor's operation.

2. In the past two weeks, spent fuel rods were removed and stored in cooling ponds before the IAEA was able to tag 300 rods that would enable the agency to verify if any plutonium was diverted in 1989.

3. To obtain weapons material, the rods can be dissolved in nitric acid, and plutonium can be separated, then chemically purfied to create weapons-grade plutonium.

4. About 18 lbs. (8 kg.) of this enriched plutonium is needed to produce one fission bomb. The rods now contain enough material to make four or five bombs.

With reporting by Edward W. Desmond/Tokyo, Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing and J.F.O. McAllister and Jay Peterzell/Washington