Posted May 1, 2008

The world experienced a surreal moment in the five-year, multilateral effort to denuclearize North Korea last week. Just as American diplomats were finalizing a deal in Pyongyang on April 24 to implement the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear programs, U.S. intelligence agencies were privately briefing members of Congress and showing a video they say is proof of North Korean involvement with the secret Syrian construction site that Israel not-so-secretly bombed last September. The video images, according to the U.S., are clear evidence that North Korea has been helping Syria for years to build a carbon copy of its own plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.

So what does this juxtaposition of events mean for the six-party talks and North Korea’s neighbors in East Asia? Will the supposed Syrian connection kill the six-party deal, or is this cloak-and-dagger camera show part of a Bush administration plan to actually save the agreement?

First, we know that the U.S. Congress is generally not happy to be treated to what many think was a token briefing. The Bush administration waited almost eight months before telling anyone but a select few in the intelligence committees about what they thought was going on between North Korea and Syria (and why Israel destroyed the facility), and then a few hours later it let the Washington Post put the formerly secret video up on its Web site.

It seems that U.S. negotiators are close to a deal with Pyongyang that could obfuscate some sensitive issues and allow the six-party talks to enter into a so-called third phase of implementation, which includes getting rid of the plutonium that North Korea has been producing and using in nuclear weapons. Washington had wanted North Korea to admit to past proliferation transgressions, but the North refused. Thus, the video could be a way to show the world (and Congress) what the U.S. thinks it knows, declare “victory,” and get past the impasse to begin phase three.

Upsetting Congress is dangerous, however, because the other part of the deal is for Washington to remove sanctions on North Korea, and Congressional support is key to this carrot. The Bush administration’s video song and dance could end up raising more questions on the Hill than it answers, and so we might not get to phase three.

This would be a shame, because the idea of focusing on North Korea’s plutonium first and taking care of proliferation and other concerns later makes some sense. Critics of this deal (and there are plenty) offer no alternative means to get nuclear weapons out of North Korea and return that country to the non-proliferation regime. It’s hard to argue that because North Korea is a dangerous proliferator, then we ought to reject the deal and let them keep lots of weapons-grade plutonium and continue perfecting nuclear weapon designs.

But U.S. negotiators must also be careful not to finesse too much these valid questions about past North Korean uranium enrichment or proliferation activities, because they are critical to building trust among key players in the six-party process and maintaining confidence over the long term. The United States will not be able to move forthrightly toward normalization with North Korea if serious suspicions linger on these issues, and in that case the subsequent tentative follow-through by Washington will only feed doubt in Pyongyang about America’s true intentions. Both sides will have to compromise and neither will see risk reduced to zero, but there are ways to reduce risk to acceptable levels and improve the current situation through multilateral action.

Mr.  Schoff is associate director of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Cambridge, MA.