Threats by Iran and North Korea Shadow Talks on Nuclear Arms
Published: May 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, April 30 - Just 48 hours before representatives of 189 nations meet at the United Nations to review the flaws in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran threatened Saturday to resume producing nuclear fuel, and North Korea dismissed President Bush as a "philistine whom we can never deal with."
The conference that begins Monday was meant to offer hope of closing huge loopholes in the treaty, which the United States says Iran and North Korea have exploited to pursue nuclear weapons. Instead, the session appears deadlocked even before it begins, according to senior American officials and diplomats preparing for it in New York.
Already virtually dead, the officials say, is a proposal by Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that would impose a five-year moratorium on all new enrichment of uranium and reprocessing of plutonium. Those activities are the two main paths to a nuclear weapon. But the United States, Japan and France oppose the moratorium because of its potential disruption of nuclear power projects. In this case, Iran is in the same camp.
Iran, a signatory to the treaty, declared Saturday that negotiations with the European Union over the future of its nuclear program had made so little progress by Friday evening that it might end its voluntary halt on enriching uranium next week. Hassan Rowhani, the top Iranian negotiator, said that next week the country's leadership would make "a definitive decision on whether or not to resume uranium enrichment."
As they prepare for an election in June, Iran's leaders have argued that the country will never give up the right - provided under the treaty - to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. But Mr. Bush has cited Iran as an example of a country that is using the treaty to fuel a covert weapons program, and the president's aides will argue in New York that, properly interpreted, the treaty should bar Iran from any nuclear work because it hid so many of its activities from inspectors for 18 years.
"The Iran situation has turned very serious in the past few days," a senior European diplomat said Saturday. "We think they are about to start up again," the diplomat said, though they may begin by resuming manufacture of a raw form of uranium that, until enriched, cannot be used for weapons.
North Korea's declaration on Saturday that it would not deal with Mr. Bush was its first response to Mr. Bush's statements on the Korean nuclear prices at his news conference on Thursday evening. Mr. Bush called Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, a "tyrant" and said he maintained "concentration camps." But he insisted that the United States would continue negotiations over the North's nuclear program. While it is difficult to sort through North Korea's often overheated official rhetoric, until now its position has been that it wants to negotiate with the administration one-on-one.
American intelligence officials said Friday that they were increasingly concerned about murky evidence that North Korea may be preparing for a test that would end debate about whether it has mastered the technology of building nuclear warheads. The country pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty two years ago and ejected international inspectors. That showcased another flaw in the treaty: it permits countries to build nuclear programs for peaceful purposes and then, with 90 days notice, pull out of the treaty. That means they can develop facilities under the treaty, then shift them to weapons programs.
After North Korea's withdrawal, Mr. Bush has led the international criticism of the treaty, contending in a February 2004 speech that Iran and North Korea - both of which obtained nuclear technology from the illicit network built by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer - are vivid examples of how the treaty has all but collapsed.
A conference to review progress in compliance with the treaty is held every five years. In addition to the moratorium, there is another proposal to close one of the loopholes. Germany and France have suggested that countries that built nuclear facilities under the protection of the treaty would have to dismantle them if they withdraw.
But in the year that has followed, Mr. Bush and his aides decided not to call for the treaty to be rewritten. They fear doing so would take the focus away from Iran and North Korea, and play into the hands of nations that complain the existing treaty favors nations that already have large nuclear arsenals, and that have moved too slowly to fill their commitments to shrinking those arsenals to zero. Mr. Bush is sending only midlevel officials to the opening of the conference in New York.
"I'm gratified by the fact that there seems to be a consensus that we have a problem," said Stephen G. Rademaker, the State Department official who will be leading the American delegation. "There is a problem with the nuclear fuel cycle, and the capability that it can give to those who have nuclear weapons, or who want them."
Mr. Rademaker finds himself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Iran on one point: that a moratorium on new nuclear activity must be avoided. Iran has objected to the proposal because it would kill its ambitious nuclear plans. But major industrialized countries - including the United States, Japan and France - have also objected.
Mr. Rademaker, in an interview, brushed aside comparisons between the American position and Iran's. "The larger point in this is that nobody who is a key country in this debate has endorsed the ElBaradei proposal for a moratorium," he said.
Mr. Bush, whose aversion to large United Nations forums is well known, has chosen a different way to address the loopholes in the treaty: he is seeking agreement from a smaller club, called the Nuclear Suppliers Group, to cut off the sale of all nuclear equipment to countries like Iran and North Korea. No such agreement has been reached within that group, which is made up of technologically advanced nations, and which meets largely in secret. Mr. Bush has also organized a group of nations into a partnership called the Proliferation Security Initiative to seize nuclear-related shipments.
That approach is intended to work around the United Nations, and avoid subjecting the United States to a broad debate about whether it is in compliance with its own obligations under the treaty. Nonnuclear countries agree to forgo acquiring weapons under the treaty, while the United States and other nuclear powers agree to the eventual elimination of their own stockpiles. But no timetable is set. (Israel, India and Pakistan never signed the treaty and, like North Korea, will not be officially represented at the conference.)
"The administration wants to use the meeting to point to Iran and North Korea, and much of the rest of the world wants to use it to say that the Bush administration has flagrantly flouted its own responsibilities," said Graham Allison, a nuclear expert at Harvard who has written extensively on the spread of nuclear weapons.
A colleague of Professor Allison's at Harvard, Matthew Bunn, puts Mr. Bush's situation a bit differently: "You only get constraints on the rest of the world if you accept more constraints on us."
He noted that the last treaty review conference, in 2000, ended with a political declaration of "13 steps" toward disarmament that the Clinton administration also endorsed. They included maintenance of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - which the Bush administration jettisoned - and ratification of a comprehensive test ban treaty, which Mr. Bush has also opposed.
"We now have replaced the ABM treaty with the Treaty of Moscow," Mr. Rademaker noted, referring to a treaty with Russia. "That commits all sides to a two-thirds reduction in our nuclear arsenals. That is a stabilizing treaty," he said.
Mr. Rademaker said his goal for the conference was to "come up with ways of reinforcing the regime without rewriting the regime." But because the conference operates by consensus, the Bush administration's expectations are minimal.
The conference lasts until May 27, meaning that the Iran and North Korea dramas will play out while the session goes on.
The leading candidate for the presidency of Iran, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said Friday during prayer sermons at Tehran University that Iran would pursue the enrichment of uranium "at all costs."
Iran, he said, "considers itself strong enough to defend its rights." Referring to the Europeans, he said the country would not let other nations impose any permanent suspension of uranium enrichment.
"We will be patient and will continue these lengthy and fruitless negotiations until you are persuaded that we are not seeking nuclear weapons," he said.
Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London for this article, and Nazila Fathi from Tehran.