Pentagon ratchets up Korea tensions over nuclear facility

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Pentagon ratchets up Korea tensions over nuclear facility
By Bill Van Auken
23 November 2010

An American nuclear scientist’s report on North Korea’s development of a new
uranium enrichment plant has provoked dire warnings from top US military and
political officials.

In a report posted online over the weekend, Siegfried Hecker, the former
director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said that during a visit to
North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex last week, he was taken on an inspection
tour of both a new experimental light-water nuclear reactor and another facility
that contained “more than 1,000 centrifuges” that the North Koreans said were
already being used to process low-enriched uranium to provide fuel for the reactor.

Hecker described the facility as “stunning.” He wrote in his report, “Instead of
seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North
Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand
centrifuges all neatly aligned and plumbed below us.” He said the facility was
“astonishingly modern,” adding that “it would fit into any modern American
processing facility.”

Referring to the North Koreans’ insistence that the facility was meant to fuel
the light-water reactor— sanctions have prevented North Korea from importing
nuclear technology and fuel—the US scientist wrote: “It is possible that
Pyonyang’s latest moves are directed primarily at eventually generating
much-needed electricity. Yet, the military potential of uranium enrichment
technology is serious.”

While low-enriched nuclear fuel is designed for use in power stations, such a
facility could be reconfigured to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear
weapons.

The report provoked a sharp reaction from Washington and the ratcheting up of
already elevated tensions in the region.

Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued the most
bellicose response in a series of statements made on morning news talk shows on
Sunday.

“It confirms or validates the concern we’ve had for years about their enriching
uranium, which they’ve denied routinely,” Mullen said. “They are a country that
routinely we are unable to believe that they would do what they say.”

Speaking on ABC, the US military commander said, “The assumption certainly is,
that they continue to head in the direction of additional nuclear weapons. And
they’re also known to proliferate this technology. So they’re a very dangerous
country.” He added, “I’ve been worried about North Korea and its potential
nuclear capability for a long time. This certainly gives that potential real
life, very visible life that we all ought to be very, very focused on.”

And, appearing on CNN, Mullen stated, “All of this is consistent with
belligerent behavior and the kind of instability creation in a part of the world
that is very dangerous.”

Speaking from Bolivia, where he was attending a conference of the Defense
Ministers of the Americas, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that “an
enrichment plant like this, assuming that is what it is, obviously gives them
the potential to create a number more” nuclear weapons.

North Korea reportedly now has between 8 and 12 weapons produced with the use of
plutonium recovered from spent nuclear reactor fuel rods. It has tested two of
these fairly crude devices. Enriched uranium could provide an alternate means of
producing more powerful weapons.

“North Korea has ignored a number of Security Council resolutions,” said Gates.
“They continually try to export weapons. So the notion they have developed this,
is obviously a concern.”

Asked about Pyonyang’s insistence that it is only producing low-enriched uranium
that is designed only for peaceful use in producing power, Gates told reporters,
“I don’t credit that at all.”

South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Tae-Young told a meeting of the country’s
parliament that in response to the report from North Korea, the government in
Seoul is considering requesting that Washington redeploy tactical nuclear
weapons on the peninsula.

The US military, which has some 28,500 troops deployed in Korea and has
maintained a presence there since the end of the Korean War in 1953, withdrew
the nuclear weapons in 1991 as part of a nuclear arms treaty with the former
Soviet Union.

He said that the US and Korea would consider the redeployment when they “meet to
consult on the matter at a committee for nuclear deterrence,” according to a
report in the Korea Herald.

The Pentagon said that there are no immediate plans to bring US nuclear weapons
back onto the Korean peninsula. It is widely understood, however, that a North
Korean nuclear attack on South Korea would be met with a US nuclear response.

The controversy over the new nuclear facilities in North Korea came as President
Barack Obama’s special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, was in the region
for talks on the possibility of reviving the six-party talks. He met with
officials in Seoul and Tokyo Monday and was to hold talks in Beijing on Tuesday.

These negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear program, which include North and
South Korea, Japan, the United States, Russia and China, broke down in April
2009 with Pyongyang withdrawing from the talks. North Korean officials told
Hecker that work on the new reactor began the same month.

US State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told reporters on Monday that
North Korea’s showing the nuclear facility to the American scientist may have
been a “publicity stunt” aimed at pressuring Washington to resume negotiations.

“We will not be drawn into rewarding North Korea for bad behavior,” he said
“They frequently anticipate doing something outrageous or provocative and
forcing us to jump through hoops as a result, and we’re not going to buy into
this cycle.”

Washington, together with South Korea and Japan, has until now taken a harder
line toward the resumption of talks, demanding as a precondition that North
Korean state its willingness to disarm and acknowledge responsibility for the
sinking of a South Korean warship last March in which 46 sailors died. Pyongyang
has denied attacking the ship.

While the North Korean regime may have believed that unveiling the reactor and
the centrifuge facility would serve to jump-start the talks, thereby opening the
way toward a resumption of badly needed aid and realizing its goal of
normalizing relations with Washington, this could prove a serious miscalculation.

With the Obama administration’s foreign policy in shambles and with the
Republican victory in the midterm elections pushing the administration even
further to the right, it is very possible that the White House will take a more
confrontational approach.

Its policy will be determined in large part by the strategic interests of US
imperialism throughout Asia and, most fundamentally, by the growing frictions
between Washington and Beijing.

In his remarks Sunday, the Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Mullen indicated that
Washington would utilize the controversy to step up pressure on China. “We’ve
been engaged with China for an extended period of time with respect to North
Korea,” Mullen said. “A great part of this, I think, will have to be done
through Beijing.”

China accounts for nearly three quarters of North Korea’s trade and 90 percent
of the country’s oil imports. Beijing views the country as a strategic buffer,
while also fearing the impact of its economic and political destabilization
under the pressure of ever-tightening sanctions. At the same time, the Chinese
leadership does not want to see the North Korean nuclear question turned into a
pretext for an escalation of US military power in the region or for military
buildups in South Korea and Japan.

In an interview with the Armed Forces Press Service on Monday, Michele Flournoy,
the undersecretary of defense for policy, gave voice to the increasingly
aggressive posture of the US military in Asia.

“We think as we look out over the 21st century, Asia will be increasingly
important and central to our foreign policy,” she said. Describing the US role
in Asia as that of “regional stabilizer”, she added, “It’s our presence that in
large part provides the stability and reassurance to the countries of the region
so that economic dynamism can continue.”

This perspective of the US military as Asia’s policeman points inevitably to
escalating tensions with China and the potential for military confrontation.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/kore-n23.shtml

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