North Korea - The step in right direction

A big breakthrough was achieved in the ongoing talks between North Korea and five parties, the US, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia, in Beijing. In a joint statement signed between North Korea and the five parties, North Korea has agreed scrap its Nuclear Weapons program, give up its Nuclear arsenal and rejoin the NPT. In exchage the US has pledged that it will not attack North Korea and reaffirmed that it did not have Nuclear Weapons in the Korean Peninsula.

The signatories have agreed to provide energy assistance to North Korea in exchanged for giving up its arms. The US has also given up its insistence that North Korea give up all its Nuclear Programs. The signatories have agreed to 'recognize' the North's demand for nuclear energy and said Pyongyang's request to have a light-water nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes would be revisited 'at an appropriate time.'

This is a step in the right direction. The next step would be a verification regime, where Nuclear weapons inspectors would re-enter North Korea. A decision on this will be taken in the next round of talks in November.

Let us see this development in perspective of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a treaty, opened for signature on July 1, 1968, restricting the possession of nuclear weapons. The vast majority of sovereign states (189) are parties to the treaty. However two out of seven nuclear powers(India and Pakistan) and one possible nuclear power(Israel) have not ratified the treaty. North Korea which had earlier ratified the NPT, however revoked its signature after a dispute with inspectors over inspections of non-declared nuclear facilities. Iran has signed the NPT, but as of 2004 is under suspicion from the United States of having violated the treaty through an active program to develop nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency is investigating. Iran says it merely wants to develop nuclear power.

The NPT is often seen in terms of its three pillars :

• non-proliferation
• disarmament
• the right to peacefully use nuclear technology

An analysis of the above in the past 37 years of NPT does not project a very bright picture.

At the time the Treaty was being signed NATO had in place secret weapons sharing agreements whereby the United States provided nuclear weapons to be deployed by, and stored in, other NATO states. As of 2005 the United States still provides about 180 tactical B61 nuclear bombs for use by Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey under these NATO agreements. Though NATO argues that these bombs continue to play an essential role in war prevention, it is direct contravention of the spirit of Articles I and II of the NPT.

As far as disarmament is concern, no real progress has ever happened on that front. Only one country has been known to ever dismantle their nuclear arsenal completely—the apartheid government of South Africa apparently developed half a dozen crude fission weapons during the 1980s, but they were dismantled in the early 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a number of former Warsaw Pact states (Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan) found themselves in possession of Soviet nuclear weapons, but they were apparently given to Russia (who took responsibility and ownership of the Soviet arsenal), though due to a clerical error it has been reported that Ukraine may still be in possession of some number of nuclear missiles. As far as US is concerned, though there have been serious concerns raised for disarmament of its Nuclear Arsenal both within and outside the US, concrete steps have never been taken.

The right to peacefully use Nuclear Technology for energy purposes, is a very thin line crossing, which countries having the technology can develop Nuclear Arsenal. Virtually any industrialized nation today has the technical capability to develop nuclear weapons within several years if the decision to do so were made. Nations already possessing substantial nuclear technology and arms industries could do so in no more than a year or two, perhaps even as fast as a few months or weeks, if they so decided to. The larger industrial nations (Japan and Germany for example) could, within several years of deciding to do so, build arsenals rivaling those of the states that already have nuclear weapons.

On 18 July 2005, US President George W. Bush had met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and declared that he would work to change US law and international rules to permit trade in US civilian nuclear technology with India. It is feared that in combination with US attempts to deny Iran (an NPT signatory) civilian nuclear technology, this effectively destroys the NPT. Though there are many more storms and troubled waters to overcome, the agreement between North Korea and US led delegation is definately a step in the right direction. As I had mentioned in one of my previous post (Little Boy - Fat Man) let us all pray that Nagasaki always remains the last Atomic Bomb site!

Ref: Wikipedia