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Thursday, Feb. 13, 2003

"A resolution has been adopted," Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman at the agency's Vienna headquarters, confirmed for United Press International.

The decision came out of a special board meeting comprising 35 member states of the U.N. nuclear watchdog. It was not unexpected - last month the agency's Director General Mohammed ElBaradei warned of it if North Korea did not "urgently comply" - but represents an increase in tensions.

The most important and contentious consequence of sending the issue to the Security Council is the specter of sanctions, which the United Nations has imposed before on North Korea for its nuclear programs. Since the 1993 crisis, however, the isolated country's economy is more fragile than ever, and estimated millions of its citizens starved during a famine in the mid-1990s even as the regime expanded its military. It is in the midst of an unusually harsh winter.

Cowardly Europe Wants to Appease North Korea Too

Just hours before the IAEA announcement, the European Union's foreign policy chief declared during a visit to Seoul, South Korea, his alliance opposed sanctions.

"I don't think it is the moment to do sanctions," said Javier Solana. "I do think that sanctions will contribute to the opposite of what we wish to obtain: the defusing of the crisis.

"Whatever is done, it should not contribute to escalation. It should contribute to de-escalation."

North Korea has warned it would view any sanctions as "a declaration of war" and no longer recognize the U.N. Security Council.

Clinton's Idiocy Never Dies

Last October, the United States announced it had presented North Korea with evidence it was pursuing a program to enrich uranium, a critical first step to developing nuclear weapons. As a result, the Bush administration cut off heavy-fuel shipments the Clinton administration had agreed in 1994 to supply Pyongyang until the "international community" finished building North Korea two light-water reactors.

In return for the shipments and reactors, the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il falsely claimed he would shut down another nuclear program, one that could lead to plutonium-based nuclear weapons.

In December, North Korea removed monitoring devices for that mothballed program and asked IAEA inspectors to leave the country. Satellite imagery and other evidence indicates North Korea has restarted its plutonium program, specifically a reactor at the Yongbyong research site that Pyongyang says is for electricity to replace the fuel oil shipments. That reactor is less than one-tenth the size that nuclear experts say will generate a practical amount of electricity, however.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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