Word: iaea
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...with North Korea. First, Pyongyang exacerbated the 15-month dispute by beginning to remove plutonium-rich fuel rods from a nuclear reactor without monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency -- which could enable the North to acquire more plutonium for its suspected nuclear arms program. The move prompted the IAEA to issue an unusually blunt statement accusing Pyongyang of a "serious violation" of its commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And that effectively catapulted the entire mess back to Bill Clinton...
...being stonewalled since February 1993, inspectors were finally allowed back to seven sites at the North's Yongbyon nuclear complex. Nothing unusual was found at six of the sites, but at the seventh, where plutonium for bombs can be extracted from nuclear-fuel rods, the team discovered that an IAEA seal on an area containing a "glove box" for handling radioactive material was broken -- a janitor's mistake, claimed North Korea. But the inspectors were not permitted to take samples from the "glove box" that would reveal any recent handling of the North's plutonium stocks. They saw no evidence...
President Clinton warned last year that "we will not allow the North Koreans to develop a nuclear weapon." That threat is easier made than implemented. The North Korean problem is a four-dimensional chess game where each major player -- the U.S., North and South Korea, and the IAEA -- fears the political consequences of making concessions and the military consequences of getting tough. Last week a new player appeared on the scene when Russia tried another opportunistic raid into U.S. diplomatic territory by proposing an international conference to settle Korea's problems. Washington politely dismissed the idea as a harmful diversion...
This gentle strategy flows partly from a widely shared view in Washington that the North may simply have miscalculated when it denied the IAEA complete access to the seventh site. Pyongyang is an exceedingly tough bargainer, practiced at extracting rewards time and again for the same concession. This time it tried horse trading access to the seventh site for Seoul's agreement to postpone an exchange of high-level envoys to discuss nuclear questions, something the U.S. opposed. The IAEA, tired of being endlessly diddled, would not buy the deal, a reaction that appears to have surprised the North. "They...
Washington -- The international Atomic Energy agency will circulate a report this week detailing the agency's unsuccessful negotiations with North Korea over nuclear safeguards. Barring an eleventh-hour breakthrough, the report will say that those safeguards have broken down and that the IAEA is no longer sure what North Korea is doing with its plutonium stockpile. The iaea is likely to force the issue and refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council, which will then have to decide whether to impose sanctions on North Korea. Pyongyang has threatened to treat sanctions...