As beleagured North Korea steps back from the bomb, what lesson in this for Iran?

With attention focused on Iraq and Iran, the news that North Korea, the third member of President Bush’s infamous ‘axis of evil’ — had struck a deal on February 8 over its nuclear programme came as a pleasant surprise.

As an initial step, in return for 50,000 tonnes of food aid and fuel oil, Pyongyang agreed to shut and seal its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon inside 60 days. Both the US and Japan agreed to begin bilateral talks with North Korea with a view to normalising their relations. Washington will proceed towards removing North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and the cessation of trade sanctions.

As Pyongyang provides a comprehensive declaration of its nuclear programmes and disables all of its existing facilities, so it will receive additional aid worth 950,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil (equivalent to more than two-thirds of North Korea’s entire oil consumption in 2004). Chief US negotiator Christopher Hill said the aid package was worth about $250 million at current prices.

On the face of it, a good day in the fight against nuclear proliferation. But doubts are already being expressed about the nature and solidity of the deal. Referring to the 1994 Agreed Framework in which the US, Japan and South Korea provided fuel and light-water reactors in return for a suspension of North Korea’s nuclear programme, some are saying that this new agreement merely takes us ‘back to the future’. They ask why this deal could not have been agreed four years ago, before North Korea conducted its nuclear test and acquired enough plutonium to build up to ten more nuclear weapons.

Maybe, but we should not forget that the previous agreement unravelled when North Korea, in response to US accusations, eventually confessed that it was in flagrant breach by conducting a clandestine uranium enrichment programme.

Having been caught out, Pyongyang ended the freeze on its plutonium-based weapons programme, sent the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors packing and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Since the end of 2002, therefore, the IAEA has not been able to verify the scope and accuracy of North Korea’s initial declaration submitted in 1992, and nor can it check whether fissile material has been diverted for military use.

As a consequence, over the past four years North Korea has proceeded with its nuclear weapons programme beyond the world’s gaze — revealing its capability most clearly on October 9 last year when it conducted an underground explosive test of an actual weapon.

Precisely why North Korea chose that moment significantly to raise the stakes is unclear. Some believe it was because US financial sanctions had begun severely to hamper Pyongyang’s efforts to earn hard currency, and thereby to exacerbate the country’s severe energy shortages. In turn, other banks and firms had taken the US lead and stopped doing business with North Korea. The weapon test was both a cry of pain and a renewed reminder to the world that the regime had something serious with which to bargain.

But Kim Jong Il had overplayed his hand: he managed to annoy China, his one ally. Consequently, China backed UN sanctions against North Korea and suspended military aid. Hence, when the fifth round of the deadlocked six-party talks resumed in Beijing in February this year, North Korea was under renewed pressure, most obviously from the hosts, to bend. Indeed, China’s desire for a resolution was reflected in the significant diplomatic effort it invested at the talks to create the conditions for progress.

Beijing’s motives are fairly clear. It does not want sanctions to push its impoverished neighbour over the edge as this would result in a flood of refugees pouring across the Chinese border. Although the prospect of US military strikes remains remote, China sees no advantage in North Korea deliberately provoking the Americans. What it certainly does fear is a nuclear-armed North Korea spurring South Korea and, even worse, Japan into following suit.

What of Washington’s motives for negotiating this deal? Some suggest that it was partly because Bush wanted to avoid the prospect of all three ‘axis of evil’ regimes being more dangerous at the end of his eight years in office than they had been at the start. For international and domestic audiences alike, he could sell this deal as a triumph for his hard-line stance and targeted sanctions policy. Perhaps more cynically, it would serve the political purpose of neutralising the issue for the remainder of his presidency.

Realising that it had miscalculated and in acute need of financial sanctions being lifted, Pyongyang probably decided it was time to beat a tactical retreat. After all, it had agreed to suspend nuclear activities once before. Only now it was doing so from a position of greater strength — having tested a weapon and produced the material to make a number of others. So, is Pyongyang any more serious about actually ending its nuclear weapons programme this time around?

The encouraging signs for this deal — compared to the one in 1994 — are that it involves all of the major regional players and that it places the nuclear issue in the context of a wider multilateral security framework. All six parties are the guarantors of the agreement, which means that China and Russia have a stake in its success, as well as the US, South Korea and Japan.

Within 30 days five official working groups should already be examining the various components of this agreement as follows: the normalisation of diplomatic relations between the US and North Korea and between Japan and North Korea; the provision of economic, energy and humanitarian assistance to North Korea; wider peace and security in North East Asia; and denuclearisation.

After 60 days the foreign ministers of all six countries will meet to begin discussions on the disabling of all North Korean nuclear facilities. Moreover, unlike last time, the vast bulk of the aid package will be delivered only after North Korea has disabled its nuclear activities, which probably will not be possible for another two years.

Of great importance to Pyongyang, Christopher Hill announced that the dispute over the Macau-based Bank Delta Asia and its alleged involvement in North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering would also be resolved inside 30 days. Early indications suggest that around a third of $24 million in frozen North Korean accounts at the bank might be released.

Given his track record, it would be naïve to expect that Kim Jong-Il has now accepted the complete dismantlement of his regime’s nuclear weapons programme. When his state news agency refers only to ‘temporary suspension’ of North Korea’s nuclear facilities alarm bells may already be ringing in Washington. Indeed, the deal talks of ‘disabling’ all of North Korea’s nuclear facilities, rather than dismantling them. The language smacks of suspension, which is reversible, as opposed to dismantlement, which is more permanent.

One of the initial key tests of whether this deal will prove effective will be the degree of access granted to the IAEA inspectors. Disturbingly, the wording of the deal refers to the inspectors’ verification activities being confined to those that are ‘agreed between’ North Korea and the IAEA.

This is far from providing the unrestricted access necessary to provide adequate reassurance to the international community that North Korea is not continuing to pursue clandestine activities. For instance, how will the IAEA establish the veracity of North Korea’s denial that it is conducting uranium enrichment?

Japan’s approach may also prove a potential sticking point. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will not agree to a normalisation of relations until the historically contentious matter of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens is resolved.

Heralding this deal as a template for Iran, as White House spokesman Tony Snow tried to do, may not be too smart. Bringing together all relevant regional powers to construct a comprehensive package of carrots and sticks may have a useful parallel application.

On the other hand, North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT, tested a weapon and is now negotiating terms for the IAEA’s re-admittance: hardly a model one wants to apply to Iran. The real link may be that President Bush, having covered his North Korean nuclear flank, now feels free to concentrate on sorting out Iran.

Putting a lid on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions is a step in the right direction, but whether this deal eventually leads to the complete disablement of all North Korea’s nuclear facilities remains to be seen. Kim Jong-Il, desperate for the security assurances and aid that might preserve his reign, has only one card. He will want to extract a high price before relinquishing it.

Dr Stephen Pullinger is Executive Director of the International Security Information Service (ISIS) Europe, an independent think tank providing analysis of international security issues, based in Brussels. In 2000 he was a Specialist Adviser to the Foreign Affiars Committee during its inquiry into weapons of mass destruction.