North Korea's Nukes No Reason to Stop Talking
April 24, 2003 Contact: Steve LaMontagne (202) 546-0795 x100
Despite North Korea’s reported admission today that it has nuclear weapons, the Bush Administration should continue talks with North Korea and other regional powers with the goal of complete and verifiable dismantlement of Pyongyang’s nuclear program. According to reports on CNN and MSNBC, talks between U.S., North Korean, and Chinese officials ended abruptly on Thursday after North Korea stated that it already possesses nuclear weapons.
“We shouldn’t cancel future talks just because we found out what we already assumed to be true,” said Steve LaMontagne, senior analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC.
U.S. intelligence estimates have long speculated that Pyongyang might already possess one or two weapons, a belief shared by Bush Administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Still, there has been no definitive public assertion by North Korea that it has acquired nuclear weapons. Last November, Radio Pyongyang broadcasted an ambiguous statement that North Korea had “come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons.” However, Korean linguists later concluded that North Korea only stated that it was entitled to possess nuclear weapons, not that it already had them.
“There’s a chance that the actual meaning of today’s alleged statement from North Korea was similarly lost in translation,” LaMontagne said.
Even if the reports are confirmed to be true, it is unclear whether North Korea’s nuclear weapons are fully assembled, or whether they will even work. Pyongyang has not conducted a nuclear test, and its weapons would most likely use plutonium instead of highly enriched uranium (HEU). Although a simple, untested, gun-type weapon using HEU could work with a reasonable degree of confidence, a reliable plutonium bomb is much more difficult to build without nuclear testing.
Moreover, it is unclear whether North Korea possesses the capability to deliver a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.
“There’s a lot that we don’t know about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. We shouldn’t get carried away,” LaMontagne said.