UN faces greater challenge in the North Korea crisis

By KENNEDY GRAHAM*

With the world transfixed over the war in Iraq, regarded by most as contravening the United Nations Charter, the Security Council is bracing itself for Modern Crisis No 2 - North Korea.

On Thursday, that country is released from its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, effectively freeing it to make and deploy nuclear weapons.

The council's president this month, Ambassador Zinser, of Mexico, has just added North Korea as an agenda item. The council plans to tackle the question on Wednesday, the day before K-day.

In many ways North Korea will prove a more difficult issue than Iraq to resolve. Iraq simply tried to cheat on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, pursuing a nuclear weapons programme while remaining a member of the treaty.

Once it was caught, it accepted, albeit grudgingly, the binding decision of the council that it "shall decide" not to develop nuclear weapons.

The intensifying crisis of the past 12 years has concerned the procedural issue of compliance, rather than the policy issue of accepting weapons of mass destruction disarmament.

North Korea, in contrast, is wrestling with the policy issue of the right to develop nuclear weapons. Unlike Iraq, it has sought twice to withdraw from the treaty, which allows all member countries to withdraw if "extraordinary events" have jeopardised its supreme national interests.

In 1993 North Korea alleged that the United States and South Korea had resumed joint military exercises - a "nuclear war rehearsal" that threatened it.

Additionally, it claimed the International Atomic Energy Agency had demanded access to military sites that had no relevance to its nuclear activities.

All this was seen as an "undisguised strong-arm act" designed to disarm it and strangle its socialist system, jeopardising its supreme interests. If tolerated, this would set a precedent for legitimising nuclear threats against non-nuclear states. The Security Council was to note North Korea's withdrawal until the US "nuclear threats" and the "unjust conduct of the IAEA" were removed.

In response, the treaty depositary Governments (the US, Britain and Russia) "questioned" whether North Korea's stated reasons for withdrawing constituted "extraordinary events relating to the subject matter of the treaty".

The Security Council noted this and urged North Korea to reconsider. Following bilateral talk with the US, an agreement was reached offering new reactors and oil supplies in exchange for North Korea's suspension of withdrawal.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty does not state that the three Governments have the right to "question" whether a country's reasons for withdrawal are valid. A withdrawing state is simply required to "give notice" of three months and include a statement of its reasons. Yet the council implicitly accorded such authority to the three, and all states, including North Korea, appear to have accepted this.

In January this year, North Korea withdrew again. In its view a dangerous situation is once more prevailing, where its sovereignty and security are being violated by the "vicious hostile policy" of the US.

The Bush Administration had listed North Korea as part of an "axis of evil", and singled it out as a target of pre-emptive nuclear attack.

North Korea said that since it had become clear "once again" that the US persistently sought to stifle it "at any cost", and since the IAEA was being used as a tool for executing American policy, it could no longer remain bound to the treaty. Withdrawal was a legitimate measure of self-defence.

Despite its withdrawal, North Korea denies any intention to produce nuclear weapons "at this stage". If the US drops its "hostile policy" and its nuclear threat against it, North Korea might prove, through a separate bilateral verification mechanism, that it is not making nuclear weapons.

The matter has been referred by the IAEA to the Security Council, whose members have given it to their national experts for analysis and advice. Things will come to a head this month, although any policy the world adopts towards North Korea could take months to develop.

Unlike Iraq, North Korea is believed to have the material for several nuclear weapons. This will make military enforcement action even more hazardous than the flawed operation under way in the Middle East. The Korean peninsula, moreover, is a greater strategic flashpoint, with great-power interests more closely involved.

The possibility of Iraq threatening Israel directly with weapons of mass destruction, and Western cities indirectly through terrorist groups, drove Anglo-American policy towards war. The North Korean issue is a step closer to usual notions of national security, despite some fears of links with terrorist groups. Perhaps traditional statecraft can resolve the issue.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Security Council, determinedly led by the US, has developed a more forceful policy on nuclear weapons - what might be called a new norm of "compulsory WMD disarmament".

Implementing that policy through force, including regime change of Governments recognised at the UN, is fraught with danger, as we see today. But it also raises policy issues concerning the "right" of other states to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty - effectively revoked by the Security Council in the case of two of the "evil axis". Iran is the third and last.

It is still possible that, once the carnage stops, the invasion of Iraq may come to be regarded as an aberration in global policy-making. But that will depend on the next few months.

How the Security Council handles North Korea, in the midst of division and angst over Iraq as the first such case, will determine the order of international relations for a long time ahead.

* Dr Kennedy Graham, a New Zealander, is a senior fellow in peace and governance at the United Nations University in Bruges, Belgium. This was submitted in a personal capacity.