Bolton hits agreement as ‘bad signal’ to Iran

The deal reached in Beijing on North Korea’s nuclear program is being criticized for making too many concessions to the hard-line government that violated a past accord, and gives up key U.S. leverage that blocked illicit financial activities by Pyongyang in the past.

“It is rewarding bad behavior of the North Koreans by promising fuel oil,” said former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, who emerged as an outspoken critic of the nuclear accord.

“It’s a bad signal to North Korea and it’s a bad signal to Iran,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview, noting that the message to would-be arms proliferators around the world is that “if you hold out long enough and wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded.”

Also, giving up financial leverage on North Korea after further talks by agreeing to lift banking sanctions is a “huge” mistake, Mr. Bolton said. “That leverage is what brought them to the table. … The Chinese were paying them to come to the talks. Now we’re paying them.”

The Beijing agreement, announced yesterday, involves supplying some $400 million in aid, including 1 million tons of fuel oil, to the communist regime that set off its first underground nuclear blast in October, despite an agreement since 1994 to freeze its nuclear program.

Under the announced terms of the accord, North Korea will received an immediate shipment of 50,000 tons of fuel oil in the next two months, with further shipments and other concessions if it then agrees to shut down its nuclear facility at Yongbyon. An additional 950,000 tons of fuel will then be provided.

Problems with interpretation of the accord already surfaced yesterday.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the agreement requires North Korea to “permanently” disable all nuclear facilities.

However, North Korea’s state-run news organ, the Korean Central News Agency, announced the shutdown of reactors at Yongbyon would be “temporary.”

Chuck Downs, a North Korea affairs specialist, said the administration’s most damaging concession was agreeing to Pyongyang’s demand to lift Treasury Department banking restrictions on Banco Delta Asia in Macao that was found to be laundering North Korean counterfeit $100 bills to finance the regime.

“We had the North Koreans on the ropes” with the banking restrictions, Mr. Downs said. “We’re losing all of that real leverage once we open the door to identifying legitimate funds there.”

The banking restrictions are to be lifted in 30 days under the accord.

Critics of the agreement also say it is similar to the failed 1994 Agreed Framework that called for North Korea to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for aid. North Korea violated that agreement and then admitted to having a secret uranium enrichment program in 2003. The North Koreans then refused to reveal or end the uranium program.

Six-nation talks including the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China have been under way for several years with limited success. The new accord will implement a September 2005 agreement that called on North Korea to give up its nuclear program.

The Beijing accord contains no reference to the uranium program, only that North Korea has agreed to discuss all its nuclear arms programs in further talks.

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