First, the usual caveat: take anything that Pyongyang says with a healthy dollop of salt.
That said, representatives from Science magazine gained unprecedented access to North Korean researchers and, among other scoops, report for the first time that Pyongyang may be willing to negotiate an end to its civilian and military nuclear program (link for subscribers only). Details below the fold.
Richard Stone reports for
Science:
PYONGYANG--The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) often resorts to fiery rhetoric when faced with challenges from the outside, but it knows about conciliatory tactics as well. Indeed, an unofficial envoy who spoke with Science here in July claimed that the government is ready to make a remarkable concession: It would abandon its nuclear program in its entirety--both weapons and power generation--in exchange for "clean energy technologies" such as wind power.
North Korea has already signaled to that it does not necessarily want a nuclear future. Mikio Mori, a negotiator for Japan, reported to Science that:
[Trading nuclear for clean energy] fits with what Kim Jong Il, leader of North Korea, told Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, in talks in Pyongyang last June. "He tried to persuade Koizumi that having nuclear weapons is not in [North Korea's] benefit and that dismantlement is their final objective."
Few doubt that North Korea could soon have several nuclear weapons if it wanted to:
U.S. analysts are more bullish on North Korea's odds of pulling it off. "Per capita, the DPRK has probably invested as much in its weapons programs as the Soviets did," notes a State Department official. Erring on the side of caution, perhaps,
the CIA estimates that North Korea has made as many as eight plutonium bombs. At the Yongbyon nuclear facility last January, North Korean scientists showed what appeared to be plutonium metal to a delegation including Siegfried Hecker, senior fellow and former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
...
More alarming is the prospect of North Korea enriching uranium, analysts say, because it's easier to get a uranium bomb to undergo fission...U.S. officials claim that A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, has admitted to having provided North Korea in the 1990s with nuclear technology, including a design for a gas centrifuge for concentrating weapons-grade uranium...North Korea also may have imported equipment for an enrichment facility through Korean-run export companies in Japan
Big news. Two questions: First, can we trust the North Koreans? I would poll that if it wasn't for the second, less obvious question: if the DPRK isserious, would we have the goods? Take the poll.
(PS - I'm not that Tom Frank. Sorry)