[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 154 (Friday, September 29, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14742-S14743]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. MURKOWSKI (for himself, Mr. Helms, Mr. McCain, and Mr. 
        Nickles):
  S. 1293. A bill to provide for implementation of the Agreed Framework 
with North Korea regarding resolution of the nuclear issue on the 
Korean Peninsula, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Foreign 
Relations.


 agreed framework between the united states and north korea legislation

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation, 
along with Senators Helms, McCain, and Nickles, which would provide a 
means for the Congress to monitor the implementation of the ``Agreed 
Framework between the United States and North Korea'' on nuclear 
issues. This will ensure that when and if we vote funds for that 
purpose, we know that that money is achieving the agreed objectives. 
The legislation conditions the availability of U.S. funds for 
fulfilling the accord on North Korea's abiding by the terms of the 
Agreed Framework and Confidential Minute in accordance with the 
schedule set forth in the agreement. Thus it adds necessary specificity 
to the timing and sequencing of all aspects of the Agreed Framework.
  The Agreed Framework is written in traditional diplomatic language, 
with insufficient detail on the timing and nature of actions which both 
North Korea and the United States must take to implement it. While I 
appreciate the Administration's desire to have flexibility in 
implementing the accord, it will be important that the North Koreans 
and the Administration understand that the Congress desires greater 
specificity if it is going to authorize and appropriate funds for this 
accord.
  I would add, Mr. President, that the legislation I am proposing is 
fully consistent with the Agreed Framework and with current U.S. 
policy. However, if this legislation causes difficulties for the 
Administration at some point, the President can waive the provisions of 
the legislation if he certifies to the Congress that it is vital to the 
national security interests of the United States to do so.
  In sum, the legislation provides the following:
  Full political and economic normalization of relations--specifically 
the exchange of Ambassadors and the total lifting of the economic 
embargo--with North Korea can occur only after:
  IAEA safeguards requirements are met, including inspections of 2 
suspected nuclear waste sites.
  Progress has been made in talks between North and South Korea.
  A more effective, regularized process has been created to return U.S. 
MIAs from the Korean War, including through joint field activities, as 
in Vietnam.
  North Korea no longer meets the criteria for inclusion on the list of 
countries the governments of which support international terrorism.
  North Korea takes positive steps to demonstrate greater respect for 
human rights.
  North Korea agrees to abide by Missile Technology Control Regime.
  All spent fuel has been removed from North Korea to a third country.
  North Korea's graphite reactors have been dismantled in a manner that 
bars reactivation of such reactors and related facilities.
  In short, until North Korea proves it is no longer a renegade state 
and wishes to behave as a normal, respected member of the international 
community, including through negotiating peacefully with the Republic 
of Korea concerning the future of the Korean peninsula, we should not 
establish full economic and political relations.
  Interim steps toward full economic and political relations, such as 
setting up diplomatic liaison offices and lifting certain economic 
regulatory sanctions, are not restricted under the legislation. In 
fact, I believe they can help provide incentives for the North Koreans 
to move ahead in these areas of concern while also giving the 
Administration useful leverage.
  The legislation also provides that the United States will suspend 
relevant activities described in the Agreed Framework if North Korea 
reloads its existing 5 megawatt reactor or resumes construction of 
nuclear facilities other than those permitted to be built under the 
Agreed Framework.
  The legislation also restricts United States direct or indirect 
support for exports of heavy fuel oil to North Korea if that state does 
not maintain the freeze on its nuclear program or takes steps regarding 
that oil which are not permitted under the Agreed Framework.
  Finally, the legislation has a reporting requirement to ensure that 
congressional monitoring of the implementation of the Agreed Framework 
and that the taxpayers' money is being spent effectively.
  I look forward to extensive debate on this legislation and its early 
passage.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, as I have often said, I have serious 
reservations about the October 1994 Nuclear Framework Agreement with 
North Korea. Therefore, I am pleased to be an original sponsor, with 
Senator Murkowski and others, of this legislation which would establish 
needed specificity to the vagaries of the agreement and provide clearly 
stated incentives for North Korean compliance with its terms.
  This legislation would prohibit the use of any U.S. taxpayer dollars 
to implement the Framework Agreement unless the Congress passes a law 
authorizing and appropriating the funds. The President would also be 
required to certify that North Korea is in full compliance with the 
terms of the Framework Agreement before any authorized funds can be 
spent.
  The legislation would prohibit normalization of diplomatic and 
economic relations between the United States and North Korea until 
several conditions are met--conditions which clearly serve our national 
interests, including the following:
  North Korea must fully comply with the IAEA safeguards agreement for 
its nuclear program.
  North Korea must forswear any support for international terrorism, 
and must demonstrate greater respect for human rights.
  North Korea must halt the export of ballistic missiles and related 
technology and agree to adhere to the Missile Technology Control 
Regime.
  The IAEA has inspected all suspected nuclear waste sites in North 
Korea.
  And most important, in my view, all spent nuclear fuel must be 
removed from North Korea, and their existing graphite-based nuclear 
reactors must be destroyed.
  Mr. President, let me take a moment to discuss some of the glaring 
flaws in the Framework Agreement, which are the principal reasons for 
my sponsorship of this legislation, and my predictions for the failure 
of the agreement.
  The most charitable appraisal I can give the agreement is that it 
represents a tendered bribe to North Korea in exchange for a limit on 
its nuclear weapons program. The underlying problem with the Nuclear 
Framework Agreement is that it is based not on trust, but on wishful 
thinking. North Korea has a well-established record of breaking its 
commitments to the U.S. and to the international community. At least 
nine times during the past two-and-a-half years, the North Koreans have 
reneged on their commitments. This agreement relies very heavily on 
North Korean good faith--indeed, it virtually tempts the North Koreans 
to break their word. That is its fundamental flaw.

  The foolish time lags between North Korea's receipt of the benefits 
of this agreement and the points at which they are required to prove 
their good faith will, I believe, prove an irresistible temptation to 
the North Koreans. This deal is front-end loaded in favor of North 
Korea. Under the deal, North 

[[Page S 14743]]
Korea gets free oil, the benefits of trade and diplomatic relations, 
two new nuclear reactors, and untold additional benefits, including 
tacit forgiveness of their blatant violation of the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty--most before incurring any real damage to their 
nuclear weapons program.
  Thus far, North Korea is only required to freeze its nuclear program 
at Yongbyon, and freeze construction of two larger reactors. Since none 
of these facilities fueled a single light bulb in North Korea (the 
Yongbyon reactor was never connected to a power grid), this is not much 
of a hardship.
  The first serious obligation imposed on North Korea under the terms 
of the agreement will not occur for 3 to 5 years from now. At that 
time, they must begin to transfer the spent fuel rods to an undisclosed 
third country. Regrettably, the Administration either doesn't know or 
refuses to disclose when this transfer will occur and which country is 
prepared to take the rods. We should insist on the transfer 
immediately.
  At that same time, as much as 5 years in the future, North Korea is 
supposed to accept its second major obligation--challenge inspections 
of undisclosed nuclear sites--especially the two suspected nuclear 
waste sites. These inspections are the only hope we have of determining 
what happened to the plutonium diverted during reprocessing in 1989. If 
North Korea reneges on the deal at this point--after receiving all the 
up-front benefits of the deal--we still won't know the truth about the 
1989 refueling of the Yongbyon reactor, and thus the truth about North 
Korea's nuclear weapons program.
  Finally, the dismantlement of any of the North Korean nuclear 
facilities will not begin until they have received one, fully 
operational, $2 billion light water reactor. This could be 7 or more 
years away. And they don't have to complete dismantlement of their 
nuclear facilities until the second reactor is completed, perhaps at 
much as 10 years from now.
  The harsh truth is that, by the time the North Koreans remove one 
brick from any of their nuclear facilities, they will have received 
from the U.S. and our Asian allies as much as 5 million tons of oil, 
inestimable millions in trade and investment opportunities, the 
propaganda value of improved relations with the United States--quite 
possibly at the expense of our relationship with South Korea, and a $2 
billion, fully operational, state of the art, light water reactor--the 
same kind we have pressured Russia and France not to sell to Iran.

  The practical effect of providing significant amounts of energy and 
economic aid to North Korea is to free up scarce hard currency for 
North Korea to use for almost any purpose--whether it is beefing up 
their military capability or rebuilding their failing infrastructure. 
Either way, their economy is almost certainly going to improve, and we 
may be facing a firmly entrenched Communist regime in North Korea for 
decades to come.
  Given North Korea's long history of broken promises and violated 
agreements, why wouldn't we expect them to break their word again, 
after collecting the many benefits of this agreement, and resume the 
operation of their current facilities after 5 or 8 or 10 years. This 
legislation would create clearly stated incentives for the North 
Koreans to honor their commitments under the agreement and dismantle 
their nuclear weapons program--incentives which were not included in 
the agreement itself.
  Mr. President, although I believe the framework agreement is 
seriously flawed, I strongly believe that Congress should not overturn 
the agreement. I do not want the U.S. Congress blamed for something 
that will really be the result of North Korean duplicity. When this 
agreement fails, I want it to be clear to all who is responsible for 
the failure--so that we can proceed immediately to organize 
international sanctions and other punitive measures which are designed 
to remove the threat of nuclear proliferation from the Korean Peninsula 
once and for all. That is what we should have done last year.
  At the same time, the American taxpayer should not be expected to 
underwrite this agreement--with one exception, which I will explain in 
a moment.
  Initially, the administration promised that the only financial 
commitment undertaken by the United States in the agreement was a one-
time shipment of oil worth roughly $5 million. Subsequent to that 
declaration, we learned that the President sent a letter to Kim Jong Il 
promising to ask Congress to pay for the new reactors if funding cannot 
be found elsewhere. To pay for the oil shipment, the administration 
avoided coming to Congress and took $4.7 million from Defense 
Department funds, using a little-known authority that is supposed to be 
used for ``emergencies and extraordinary expenses''--and they did it 
without giving Congress any prior notice.
  I should note that this little-known ``emergency and extraordinary 
expenses'' authority will not in the future be misused in such a 
fashion. I was successful in including a provision in the fiscal year 
1996 Defense authorization bill which establishes specific notification 
requirements when the authority is exercised for any expenditure 
exceeding $500,000. This provision will become law as part of the FY 
1996 Defense Authorization Act.

  Now, the Administration says that the U.S. financial commitment to 
this agreement may ultimately amount to $20-30 million per year, or 
$200-300 million over the ten-year period of the agreement.
  Since the Administration claims they did not guarantee North Korea 
that we will contribute anything more than the agreed upon oil 
shipment, and since the Administration has already demonstrated its 
intention to cut Congress out of the loop as much as possible, I think 
Congress should decline to appropriate any further funds to implement 
this accord--with one exception. That exception is with respect to the 
security, safe storage, and subsequent removal from North Korea of the 
8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods corroding in a cooling pond at Yongbyon.
  I believe we should test North Korea's intentions as early as 
possible. I believe we should identify a country willing to receive the 
fuel rods, and ask North Korea to ship them there. Should they comply, 
the U.S. should pay for the transfer. It's worth the cost, because we 
will remove from North Korea enough plutonium for 5 or 6 nuclear 
weapons, and we will have an early--though certainly not a definitive--
indicator of how seriously North Korea is taking its commitments under 
this agreement.
  Until the fuel is removed from North Korea, I believe it is 
imperative to ensure the security and safe storage of the spent fuel. I 
worked successfully in the Senate Armed Services Committee for a 
provision allowing up to $5 million of DOE funds to be used to complete 
work on the safe storage, or canning, of the spent nuclear fuel at the 
Yongbyon reactor site. Some of my colleagues wanted to refuse even this 
small amount of money, but I believe it would be counter-productive to 
allow the spent fuel to remain in an open and degrading storage pond, 
when we could at least ensure that it was less easily accessible to 
North Korea in the event the agreement fails. This provision will 
become law as part of the FY 1996 Defense Authorization Act.
  Mr. President, the legislation I am introducing today, with Senator 
Murkowski and others, is entirely consistent with the provisions of the 
Framework Agreement between the U.S. and North Korea. It merely adds 
specificity to the vagaries of the agreement, as well as incentives for 
North Korean compliance with the agreement. It also ensures that North 
Korea realizes a small part of the price it will pay for breaking its 
word to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. And it permits the 
President to waive any of its restrictive provisions if he certifies 
that it is vital to U.S. national security to do so.
  I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. It will ensure that 
the laudable goals of the Framework Agreement are realized by fixing 
its flaws.
                                 ______