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Q&A WITH ZAIN VERJEE
Q&A
Aired January 2, 2003 - 12:30:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CO-HOST: Dealing with nuclear brinkmanship after North Korea says it will reactivate a facility capable of producing enough plutonium to make at least two nuclear bombs a year.
JIM CLANCY, CNN CO-HOST: With atomic energy inspectors expelled from Pyongyang,. South Korea, is looking for diplomatic help from Beijing and Moscow. Those wanting an as yet undefined diplomatic settlement are very wary of following the White House call to isolated North Korea until and unless it reverses course.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: North Korean right now is in a defiant mode.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: President Bush is deeply engaged in trying to find a solution
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): The United States is persistently hampering the development of inter-Korean relations and bringing the situation in the Korean peninsula to the brink of a war.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The international community particular those countries close to the North Korea understand the stakes involve.
VERJEE: In this edition of Q&A, dealing with North Korea, negotiation or isolation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CLANCY: Hello, welcome once again to Q&A. As we noted there, North Korea threw out the nuclear inspectors and removed security seals from surveillance cameras from its nuclear facilities.
VERJEE: NK says that its making moves because the US has reneged on promises to build nuclear power plants in Pyongyang. North Korea also says the US is also pushing for military war.
CLANCY: Now, the US responds by saying, its not involved in a military showdown but its really involved in hard working diplomacy.
VERJEE: But before that the US had been calling for isolation of North Korea and Washington had entered about economic sanctions. Mixed messages here?
CLANCY: To help us understand it all: Joe Cironcioni, the director of the Non Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Balbina Hwang, she's the policy analyst for Northeast Asia in the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation, we're also joined by Daniel Poneman a former National Security official under the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration; he helped negotiate the 1994 agreement with North Korea, also from New York, Mansoor Ijaz, a terrorism and nuclear proliferation analyst all of them.
We're going to get to you in just a second. You know, we had comments coming out today President George W. Bush down in Crawford, Texas. Let's listen to what he had to say about North Korea.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: The country is North Korea and we are working with friends and allies in the region to explain to North Korea that it's not in the nation's interest to develop and proliferate weapons of mass destruction. Right here, at this spot where Jiang Zemin, the leader of China and myself got together to write our declaration that we expect that the Korean peninsula will be nuclear weapons free. It was a serious day. I believe the situation with North Korea will be resolved peacefully, as I said it is a diplomatic issue, not a military issue. We're working all fronts.
QUESTION: I'm going to follow that up. You said that it can be resolved diplomatically; you are quoted not long ago as saying, you "loathe Kimpyong." How can you?
BUSH: Well, what I worry about is a leader like, Pyongyang or somebody who starves his people. The United States of America is the largest, one of the largest, if not the largest donor of food to the North Korean people and one of the reasons why the people are starving because the leader of North Korea seem to think that their economy is strong or that they be fed. You know. We've got a great heart but I have no heart for somebody who starves his folks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VERJEE: Back to our guests now, first to Balbina Hwang.
Balbina, we heard from President Bush there just a second ago saying, diplomacy can resolve this standoff with North Korea. Can it and does he mean it?
BALBINA HWANG, NORTHEAST ASIA POLICY ANALYST, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, yes I think he does mean it. I think it has to be attempted. We won't know if would work unless we try it first and it certainly a much more palatable option than any military strike might be.
VERJEE: Daniel.
DANIEL POLIMAN, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL: I agree, I think that the military options while as Secretary Powell said over the weekend are always available, they are far less preferable. If one is able to get the North Koreans to dismantle their enrichment program, to bottle up their plutonium program and to accept inspectors through negotiations, that's the way to go.
CLANCY: Yes, but Joe Cirincione, how much is everyone going to have to get up to get that out of Seoul now. Negotiating one of them is been proven it doesn't work.
JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, DIRECTOR, NON PROLIFERATION PROJECT, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE: Well, actually negotiations do work. The Clinton administration successfully froze their nuclear program for eight years they have not producing any plutonium. When Secretary of State Powell came into office one of the first things he talked about was how he wanted to build on that framework and make it tougher, expand it. That was their criticism. But for the first two years the Bush administration we squandered the opportunity, we haven't been negotiating with them at all and now the process is falling a part. Now it's up to the Bush administration to go back and negotiate their improved, tougher agreement with North Korea.
HWANG: Well, I...
CLANCY: Mansoor -- go ahead Barbara.
HWANG: Well, I have to say I disagree with the fact that the Bush administration squandered the first two years. Really, if you look back at the timeline, it's really North Korea that missed the so many opportunities including the agreement it had made not only with the United States but also with South Korea.
PONEMAN: I think when one talks about time however, whatever has happened in the past, I think now we have to realize we have a situation of genuine urgency. We have moved from, as Joe just indicated, a situation where the plutonium program was bottled up under international monitoring. The monitors have been kicked out, the seals on the facilities have been broken, the North Koreans assert they're going to restart those facilities. Within months they could have several bombs worth of plutonium. That must be stopped.
CLANCY: OK. And I understand that you negotiated for the Clinton administration but let me pass this over to Mansoor and ask him. I mean, the reality is that even before perhaps the Bush administration took office, the North Koreans were busy breaking that accord and carrying on by their own admission, a nuclear weapons development program.
MANSOOR IJAZ, TERRORISM AND NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION ANALYST: Absolutely. I think that's what really critical here that we understand that while all three of our guests have talked about the plutonium aspect of the program, there was an enriched uranium project going on for a very long time. The Pakistanis in my judgment, they've denied this but in my judgment, they've provided North Korea with critical capabilities to build centrifuges. May be even gave them the centrifuge technology in 1998. There's a very serious incident in which a company providing missile technology to Pakistan had its own senior procurement officer in Islamabad working as North Korean diplomat, his wife was shot dead in the streets of Islamabad a week after Pakistan exploded its nuclear devices in 1998.
It just tells me very clearly that our entire policy process has failed to understand that until you prevent the elements that make these programs work: enrichment facilities to centrifuges, chemicals to separate uranium from plutonium and so forth, we will never be able to succeed in completely shutting these programs down because the North Koreans are prepared to lie to us over and over again.
PONEMAN: I think Mansoor makes a valid point. I would note that historically that the earlier Bush administration recognized even as we worried about the plutonium program that there was at least a risk of the uranium enrichment program and therefore, the North-South De-Nuclearization Declaration for December 1991 forbade any enrichment of uranium in North Korea and South Korea for that matter. But for that commitment, the actions that North Korea took in the late 1990's in developing that program would have been entirely legal under international law. So, we have to be vigilant on the uranium side as well. I don't think that denies the fact that in terms of measuring from days and months the earlier threat comes from plutonium.
IJAZ: If I may add just one point to what Dan just said and that is the reason that the plutonium containment is so important is because once you've made plutonium out of the spent uranium rods, that essentially is a very stable bomb making capability, which you can actually pass around, to terrorist. You can actually sell it because you can physically hold plutonium in your hands. The problem with enriched uranium is that you need to have the bomb casing and all the detention devices very carefully constructed; and that is where China and Pakistani can play a critical a role in helping us rather than hindering us in terms of stopping the North Koreans from getting the critical elements of making the most destructive weapons that they can.
VERJEE: So, why isn't that pressure on China, on Pakistan if that's the case -- Balbina.
HWANG: Well, I believe the pressure is there. You know, this may be going on behind the scenes. And frankly, if China needs diplomatically to seem like they're neutral, that's actually OK. I think that behind the scenes diplomatic talks and pressure is really what's important.
CLANCY: Joe.
CIRINCIONE: Well, let's be clear about this, North Korea is in the wrong. They are the ones violating the international agreements; they are the ones producing these materials after promising repeatedly they would not. So, we understand that, what do we do about that?
And the President's policy right now seems to involve two elements. One: sort of ignoring North Korea, downplaying it, not wanting to negotiate with them directly, primarily for ideological reasons, there are against negotiating or dealing with dictators as they say. And two: building up pressure by North Korea's neighbors.
The problem is our closest ally in the region, South Korea; the one most affected by this crisis doesn't agree with the United States approach, thinks that what we're doing is making the situation worse. China and Russia o agree that there should be a nuclear free Korean peninsula but they're hesitant to put too much pressure on North Korea for exactly the same reasons: they don't want to drive them further into a corner risking that -- beak down of communications altogether.
Everyone in the region wants the United States to actually do face-to- face negotiations with the North Koreans. They see this as the only way out and I agree.
HWANG: Well I actually have to disagree with two things Joe said. First of all, I don't think the United States is ignoring North Korea. The reason Secretary of State Powell came out and said repeatedly that this is not a crisis was to downplay exactly what it is exactly that North Korea wants.
North Korea wants to ratchet up the tension to create tension. Why, because historically North Korea has always benefited when there has been a crisis. So, I don't believe the U.S. is ignoring North Korea at all; it is just refusing to give North Korea what it wants.
CIRINCIONE: Right, I understand that...
PONEMAN: But there are two...
CIRINCIONE: You're absolutely right -- let me just finish. That's absolutely right. But the difference between North Korea and Iraq is that here North Korea is dictating the pace of developments. And in Iraq the U.S. dictates the pace of development.
You're absolutely right, North Korea is driving us, is trying to create the crisis. The problem is they're succeeding, they have created this crisis, we can't ignore it. If we do nothing or just rely on pressure for example, North Korea will be producing plutonium in a matter of weeks. That's our problem; we've got to stop them. How do you do that?
IJAZ: Joe -- Joe the problem...
VERJEE: OK. All right. All right. I'm going to ask you to stop there. Joe, Balbina, Daniel, Mansoor we'll continue our conversation in just a moment when we when we come back.
CLANCY: Coming up, what can we put on the table to try to break this impasse? We'll take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: And they looked the United States in the eye and said, yes we have not only violated the North-South Agreement, we've violated the Non Proliferation Agreement, violated the International Atomic Energy Rules and we've violated the agreeing framework.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: Welcome back to Q&A, the first edition of 2003.
VERJEE: And this reminder, we're always interested in getting your questions about our topics.
CLANCY: You can send them to us by E-mail to q&a@cnn.com.
VERJEE: You're also invited to subscribe to our E-Mail newsletter, each day outlining what's going to be discussed by either Jim or I. That's waiting for you at our web page, cnn.com/ywt.
CLANCY: All right. Now, we're going to take a closer look at the problem trying to prevent North Korea from pressing on with the development, possibly the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We've been hearing from you.
VERJEE: And from Washington, Joe Cirincione, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Balbina Hwang, of the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation.
CLANCY: Also Daniel Poneman, a former U.S. National Security official under the first President Bush and then under the President Clinton administration. And from New York, Mansoor Ijaz, a nuclear proliferation analyst.
VERJEE: Joe, there's really been a flurry of diplomatic activities the last few days. South Korea, China, Moscow all saying you know, talk to North Korea, dialogue with North Korea; but no one is really outlining exactly how they're going to proceed, exactly how they're going to force North Korea to stand down.
CIRINCIONE: Well, the administration is driving a diplomatic effort and their version is that it's all behind the scenes. They want to have bilateral talks with each of our friends and allies in the region and then have them talk to North Korea. North Korea wants to have face-to-face negotiations.
I think eventually, the United States is going to be forced to have those negotiations as a way out. But what exactly would that entail? What is that target? What does North Korea want? I think actually most of us know what they want. They want a non-aggression pact, they want to be sure the U.S. won't attack them, they want to have diplomatic recognition, they want the same set of issues that they've raised since 1994: an end to the hostilities between the United States; and as a sweetener they probably are interested in some economic and financial aid.
Quite frankly, this is a very solvable problem. We can get this deal done; to be blunt, we could basically buy the North Korean nuclear and missile programs. We just have to negotiate the crisis.
CLANCY: All right we can, no doubt gentlemen and Balbina, we can buy our way out of this, there's no doubt about that because that's exactly what North Korea wants. They want the money to prop up a regime that President Bush even put, isn't even capable of feeding it's own people -- Mansoor.
IJAZ: Yes, the problem here Jim -- here's the problem. You have three separate components that needs to be discussed here. One is that South Korea is too close to the problem to give us, in my judgment, independent advice on how to handle this thing. It's not that they don't know what's going on but they may have domestic, political considerations that are beyond the pale.
Number two. When you look a the in which North Korea has behaved, you have to ask yourself this question: why is it in October all of a sudden they decided to just admit that they were enriching uranium at a facility that nobody knows exactly where it is? I think that what is going on here, the dialogue that's really taking place is between Iraq, Iran and North Korea and the idea is to create as much step wise and ratcheted up pressure on the American government, on the American defense establishment to see how many problems we can handle at the same time.
And their calculation is that somewhere or somehow or the other, they'll be able to get something out of this before we have go to the point of a military confrontation.
VERJEE: Balbina, I got a letter from William in the Netherlands who says this, "The Bush administration set a new confrontation by not keeping its end of the bargain by building two power plants for North Korea. That comes as the North," he says, "agreed to a visit from the South Korean president." William also says, "Let's not forget the famous Axis of Evil remarks."
Given all that, why should we surprised at what's happening today.
HWANG: Well, that's simply just not true. The United States did not renege on a deal with North Korea to provide white water reactors. Once again, if you look at the timelines, that project, the Kito Project was terribly off the schedule. But mainly because of North Korean actions: North Korea dragged its feet; its workers actually staged a labor strike so that the labor on the project was suspended for many months.
So, really it was not the United States at all and North Korea again is the one that violated it by issuing the uranium projects.
IJAZ: Balbina, I would agree with you and there's one other point that has to made there and that is once the deal was negotiated in 1994 and Dan know this better than all of us, but the fact is, that if we had built a fuel oil processing capability at that time there would have been a heck of a lot more electricity provided out of that, that out of two Mickey Mouse 5 megawatt reactors that provided them with the nuclear technology and know how which should have never been allowed to have had in the first place.
CIRINCIONE: Sure, you're absolutely right. The problem is that the North Koreans didn't want a fuel oil facility even though that was the best thing for them. They wanted a nuclear reactor. That was the best deal we could strike at the time.
I think the Bush administration can strike a better deal, a more stringent deal with far reaching inspections and verifications measures to make sure they don't cheat this time. But it's up to the Bush administration to come to the table and make that deal.
IJAZ: But Joe, just tell me thing. How do you prevent the next time we have a crisis, the next time the North Koreans decide they want to go you know, AWOL on us; the next time they want to create a crisis of their own doing, how do you stop them from kicking the inspectors out one more time?
CIRINCIONE: Sure, one...
IJAZ: How do we independently verify? How do we in fact, do that? That is something that is not clear to me at all. I think the only way you can handle this problem...
CIRINCIONE: I know...
IJAZ: ... is to pre-emptively contain them getting...
CLANCY: All right.
IJAZ: ... the stuff in the first place.
CIRINCIONE: Well, let me give a beginning to that to answer that and then I'll kick over to Dan. One thing you do as part of any deal is got to be we take the fuel rods out immediately. One of our biggest problem, they have 8,000 spent fuel rods. Those are the rods that contain enough plutonium for six more nuclear weapons.
Number one part of the deal: those fuels are already in cans, let move them out of the country right away to prevent them from ever getting them again --Dan.
PONEMAN: If I man, it's easy to describe the end state, OK?
CIRINCIONE: Yes.
PONEMAN: You want the fuel rods out of North Korea and as Mansoor says, once they are reprocessed, once we loose sight of those very large canisters in the reprocessing facilities, they turn into soda can size critical masses of nuclear weapons. We loose them forever. Critical priority.
Number two: restock the plutonium production program, which is now being unfettered.
Number three: shutdown and dismantle the uranium enrichment program.
The hard part is two fold. One, how do you get there; and two, how do you verify it. Now, now do you get there it could be done in a number of ways. The United States has made clear they're not going to go for an appeasement strategy, that's fine. Let us see IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency report to the UN Security Council on January 6...
CLANCY: All right.
PONEMAN: Let the Security Council instruct that those negotiations proceed.
CLANCY: All right, let me just make the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) centers in place. Let me make the rounds.
One of our viewers came in and said, you know, this all amounts to blackmail, really. But I want to hear, just vote one way or the other. Is it negotiate or just isolate North Korea? Balbina, let's begin with you.
HWANG: You pressure on North Korea until they come to the table. You don't negotiate with them until they take action first.
CLANCY: Dan.
PONEMAN: No solution to this problem that I see, goes anywhere except through discussions whatever you call them with Pyongyang.
CLANCY: Mansoor.
IJAZ: You cannot do it with the U.S. directly involved. You have to do it with China and Pakistan that provides the materials to them. That's the only way to get them to back down. The United States should...
CLANCY: All right.
IJAZ: ... not be uninvolved directly.
CLANCY: Joe, isolate or negotiate?
CIRINCIONE: Isolation fails, it leads to plutonium process in place, we've got to negotiate. We need a republican Jimmy Carter to break the deadlock and find a face saving solution for both sides.
CLANCY: All right: Joe Cirincione, Balbina Hwang, Daniel Poneman and Mansoor Ijaz, our thanks to all of you for being with us on Q&A.
VERJEE: Those are our guest views on Q&A, we're going to be right back with some of yours so stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: Well, we're a little bit tight on time today, so let's get right to the letters.
VERJEE: From Lebanon, "The South Korean people must stand with the United States. Why? Because President Bush is trying to make the twenty- first century a century without fear."
CLANCY: Jimmy from Britain says, "It appears to me that Bush just 'blanked.' He is making the changes about what to do with North Korea. There was talk about two wars, then economic sanctions, now only diplomacy."
VERJEEE: Jane from Switzerland, "North Korea is lucky that it doesn't have oil. If it did, the United States would proceed as it has with Iraq."
CLANCY: Mahendra from Kenya, "The USA should reduce its own nuclear weapons before they ask North Korea to do so. That is the only way to succeed with North Korea."
VERJEE: Just before we go we want to remind you send us your comments by E-mailto q&a@cnn.com. It's always good to hear from.
Remember though, to include your country as well as first name.
CLANCY: All right. It has to be Q&A for today but "Your World" is going to continue.
END
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