According to various reporters, last week Mohammed ElBaradei – Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency – "urged North Korea to promptly resume multilateral negotiations on dismantling its nuclear weapons programs."
He didn’t. Here is what ElBaradei actually said;
"I would like to see the six-party talks restarted as early as possible.
"I’d like to see by the end of the year a package agreement that takes care of the nuclear activities in North Korea and makes sure it is all under irreversible verification, that their security concerns are taken care of and their humanitarian needs addressed."
Why were reporters asking ElBaradei about North Korea? Well, a Japanese newspaper had reported that the US had given North Korea a one-month deadline; either agree to return to the "bargaining table" or face UN action.
But it turns out that the only way the issue of North Korea’s "nuclear activities" – characterized by the neo-crazies as "nuclear weapons programs" – can be successfully brought before the UN Security Council for possible "action" is for the IAEA to bring it.
The IAEA began operations in 1957. One of its principal functions was:
"To establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable and other materials, services, equipment, facilities, and information made available by the Agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose; and to apply safeguards, at the request of the parties, to any bilateral or multilateral arrangement, or at the request of a State, to any of that State’s activities in the field of atomic energy…"
So the IAEA Safeguards Regime predates the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons by more than ten years.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) joined the IAEA in 1974 and signed the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in December 1985. In January 1992 – at the insistence of the Russians – DPRK began negotiations with the IAEA on a Safeguards Agreement.
The IAEA had conducted six separate inspections of North Korea’s nuclear facilities – which included a Soviet-supplied 5 MWe graphite-moderated water-cooled nuclear reactor – when the negotiations came to a screeching halt. North Korea refused to allow IAEA inspectors to chemically assay the spent-fuel elements already removed from the reactor in order to verify the accuracy of the reactor’s past operating history, as reported by the Koreans.
The DPRK promptly announced it was withdrawing from the NPT. It considered the IAEA request "to be an encroachment on the sovereignty of the country, an interference in its internal affairs and a hostile act."
On June 11, 1993, the DPRK suspended its withdrawal – but ultimately did withdraw on the eve of Dubya’s invasion of Iraq.
However, the DPRK did renounce its IAEA membership on June 13, 1994.
Now, this is critical. The IAEA statute states that withdrawal by a member from the IAEA "shall not affect its contractual obligations to the Agency", including any Safeguards Agreement in place.
So the question arises – did the DPRK have a bona fide Safeguards Agreement in place at the time it renounced its IAEA membership?
If the answer is "no," then the IAEA has no "standing" in the current crisis, brought about by the US unilateral abrogation in 2002 of the US-DPRK "freeze" – monitored by the IAEA – of DPRK’s nuclear activities.
The US could take the issue to the UN Security Council. But, in order to get the Council to take action, the US would have to convince Russia and China – among others – that DPRK’s "nuclear activities" constituted a "threat to the peace in the region."
However, if the answer is "yes", then the IAEA Board of Governors could refer DPRK’s "non-compliance with its IAEA Safeguards Agreement" to the Security Council, with the expectation that the Council would pass a resolution threatening “serious consequences” if North Korea does not “urgently remedy its non-compliance” with its Safeguards Agreement.
Apparently ElBaradei believes the answer is "no." Here is what he told the IAEA Board last November.
"As you are aware, the Agency has not performed any verification activities in the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea (DPRK) since December 2002, and therefore cannot provide any assurance regarding the non-diversion of nuclear material. It is my hope that the six-party talks will, inter alia, lead to the return of the DPRK to the non-proliferation regime, and that the Agency will be provided with the required authority to provide credible, comprehensive assurances regarding the nuclear programme in the DPRK."
