[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 15, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S332-S334]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              NORTH KOREA

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I wish to speak to the issue that is very 
much on everybody's mind today, and that is the question of what is 
going to happen on the peninsula of North Korea and how do the actions 
of the United States, with respect to the North Korean Government's 
violation of international agreements, affect our ability to deal with 
the current situation we face in Iraq.
  Let me begin by saying that there have been attempts by people in the 
media to compare the threats between Iraq on one hand and North Korea 
on the other, sometimes I think in an effort to suggest that the 
President has misplaced his priorities. I would like to set the record 
straight.

  I think the administration has made it clear, and others are very 
clear, that there is a big threat from both Iraq and North Korea. Make 
no mistake about it, it serves no purpose to try to compare those 
threats in some theoretical way. Both have to be dealt with in their 
own way, and that also means in their own time.
  The reason the administration began dealing with Saddam Hussein and 
Iraq is because that was left over business from the gulf war of 11 
years ago where Saddam Hussein said--promised--that he would do certain 
things: That he would, for example, not have weapons of mass 
destruction or seek to acquire nuclear capability; that he would 
dismantle his missile program, and so on.
  We know through our intelligence that he has failed time and again to 
comply with those requirements. He has even continued to shoot at our 
unarmed predator reconnaissance aircraft, as well as the manned 
aircraft we fly to do surveillance over the areas of Iraq we have been 
flying over, the so-called no-fly zones, ever since the end of the gulf 
war.
  I note that is a kind of inspection. When people at the United 
Nations say Iraq is cooperating with the inspections, I wonder how much 
those pilots think this cooperation is for them when they are being 
shot at by the Iraqis. Some cooperation.
  In any event, that is unfinished business with which we have to deal 
if international agreements are going to mean anything. The United 
Nations has resolutions. Saddam Hussein agreed to abide by them. He has 
not done so. The question is, At what point is the United Nations going 
to finally decide to enforce those resolutions? That is the point 
President Bush brought to the attention of the United Nations Security 
Council. They adopted a resolution that basically gave Saddam Hussein 
one last chance to show he was in compliance.
  In the judgment of virtually everyone who looked at the document 
filed by Saddam Hussein allegedly demonstrating his compliance, it is a 
false and fraudulent document and shows that he is in noncompliance 
rather than the other way around, a result of which, sooner or later, 
we are going to have to deal with Saddam Hussein. That is where the 
President found himself prior to the evolution of the North Korean 
crisis.
  In one respect it is timely for us to deal with Iraq because from a 
military standpoint, there is no question that we can deal with Iraq in 
a way that can minimize casualties, that does not involve a large 
threat that he will attack his neighbors. Fortunately, the Israelis 
have developed a missile defense program in the 11 years since the end 
of the gulf war and will probably be able to, through the Arrow missile 
defense system, handle any kind of Scud missile attack on them, and 
Saddam Hussein has not yet acquired a nuclear weapon, in our belief. As 
a result, he is not in a position to resist a U.S. effort to bring him 
into compliance with the U.N. resolution militarily in a way that we 
fear from a military standpoint.
  On the other hand, the crisis in North Korea has now broken out, and 
we are

[[Page S333]]

faced with a question of whether military action there is possible. Of 
course, it is possible. We should never take military action off the 
table. But we know that the capability of North Korea has evolved to 
the point where it would be much more difficult to take military 
action, among other reasons, because they have long-range 
missiles, they have nuclear weapons, we believe, and they have a lot of 
weaponry just a few miles across the DMZ from Seoul, Korea, where 
something like 8 or 10 million people are located, including a large 
number of American troops. As a result, that situation has evolved 
beyond the point where we believe it is efficacious to use a military 
solution to deal with the crisis. It is a good illustration of why we 
should deal with those problems before they get to that point.

  Fortunately, Iraq does present the situation prior to that point that 
enables us to take military action there. Again, that crisis evolved, 
diplomacy failed, and it is a crisis ripe for resolution, if Saddam 
Hussein does not come clean for the world community and the United 
States, by military action.
  We are not at that point with North Korea yet. That situation arose 
relatively recently. We have known for some time there had been 
violations of the agreement that North Korea made not to produce 
fissile material. They finally confessed to Under Secretary Kelly back 
in September that they had, in fact, been developing a uranium 
enrichment program for nuclear weapons. They pointed out that they 
still had not, however, violated the agreement to keep their plutonium 
program frozen, but in the last few weeks--in the last week actually--
they decided to unfreeze their plutonium program, as a result of which 
that fissile material can be produced in relatively short order for 
inclusion in nuclear weapons.
  It is our assessment that in a matter of a very short period of time 
North Korea could again begin producing a number of nuclear weapons. 
The threat to the world, obviously, is significant because Korea is the 
largest proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, and 
if they begin selling nuclear weapons, just imagine what the 
consequence would be if a Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qadhafi--someone 
like that--would purchase nuclear weapons from a country such as North 
Korea.
  The point is, that is another crisis with which we have to deal. I do 
believe it is a crisis, and I believe it is a serious threat, but, as I 
said, it is a different kind of threat from what we are presented in 
Iraq.
  The obvious solution is to do what the President suggested. North 
Korea has to meet a goal, and the goal is to dismantle its weapons 
program in a verifiable way. If it does not do so, it is going to have 
to face consequences. The President is willing to engage in a dialog 
with North Korea, but there has to be more than carrots at the end of 
that dialog to entice North Korea to come into compliance.
  North Korea also has to understand there can be consequences it will 
not like if it fails to reach an agreement that is enforceable, 
verifiable, and one that is acceptable to the rest of the international 
community.
  It now has removed itself from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 
This is a very dangerous step. As a result, the United States and the 
other countries of the world need to take action. It would be possible 
to do so under chapters 6 and 7 of the U.N. Charter which provide for 
action by the United Nations in the event of a threat to international 
peace and stability. We could impose a resolution similar to that which 
applies to Iraq today, Resolution 661, which essentially has 
quarantined Iraq from export and import. We could do the same with 
North Korea saying no more would they be able to export weapons of mass 
destruction to generate hard currency or, by the way, illicit drugs, 
since their two biggest forms of making money are selling illicit drugs 
and weaponry which they should not be selling to countries. That would 
benefit the world. We would deny hard currency to North Korea and help 
prevent the further proliferation of these weapons of mass destruction.

  Those are actions we can take today. Senators McCain, Sessions, Bayh, 
and I introduced legislation Monday that provides a range of options of 
which the administration can take advantage. It ranges from dealing 
with the refugee crisis in North Korea to preventing repatriation of 
funds from other countries into North Korea--again denying hard 
currency--increasing the broadcasts of Radio Free Asia into North 
Korea, ensuring we are adequately prepared to provide a deterrent to 
military activity in the region. But probably the key to it is the 
reimposition of sanctions or imposition of new sanctions, such as 
Resolution 661 that applies to Iraq today.
  Those are all the kinds of action that North Korea should understand 
could come about if it does not cooperate in these discussions that the 
administration would like to have. It seems to us that it is important 
to put those kinds of points in place so that in addition to the 
carrots this administration has suggested exist, there are some sticks 
out there, too, because we have seen in the past that North Korea tends 
to violate the agreements it signs; it tends to negotiate from the 
posture of strength. If it has cards on the table, such as its nuclear 
weapons and the ability to proliferate these weapons around the world, 
then we need some cards on the table as well.
  Right now I do not think the rest of the international community has 
many cards on the table. In effect, we need to put an ``or else'' to 
the end of those negotiations so when we sit down and talk to them and 
they are intransigent, as they usually are, there is a point our 
negotiators can say: Look, you either do this or else, and the ``or 
else'' has to have some meaning.
  Dr. Kissinger made another important point, and that is the United 
States should not be in this alone. This is not our fight alone. South 
Korea, of all countries, has a stake in helping to resolve the 
situation, as does Japan, China, Russia, and other nations in the 
region.
  It is important that those nations be brought into this, and I am 
glad to see the Chinese are willing to host some kind of a meeting and 
that perhaps other countries are willing now to be brought into the 
process of discussion so that whatever agreements are reached, it is a 
product of the entire group and not only the United States.
  We should not put ourselves into the position of being the sole party 
to be blamed or for people to be looking to for enforcement of any 
agreement that may be entered into.
  We have recently seen on the streets of South Korea our friends, the 
South Koreans, telling us they do not want us in their country anymore. 
Now that is a very bad turn of events because we have been great 
allies. We are great allies. We mean only to help South Korea to 
provide security assurances for their people.
  What it does is tell Americans that if we are not wanted there, then 
perhaps we ought to leave. That is not the right message to be sending 
when stability in the region is so important to maintain. It would, of 
course, send the wrong signals to North Korea were we to begin pulling 
our troops out of South Korea. That is not the solution now. Perhaps 
someday it will be. If South Korea does not want the United States to 
remain, obviously we should not remain, but the right time to do this 
is after this crisis is resolved, not in the middle of the crisis.
  There is a lot hanging in the balance. It seems to me when we analyze 
the situation in Iraq and in Korea, we have to appreciate that they are 
two totally different situations. There are some parallels. Both 
countries are part of the axis of evil. Both represent threats to the 
United States and other nations in the world. They both have to be 
dealt with, but they have to be dealt with in different ways. There is 
no confusion in the administration policy in this regard. There is no 
conflict. This is not a matter of having disparate policies. It is 
merely a matter of recognizing that it is a complex world and what 
works in one particular place may not work in another particular place.
  That is why we have the two different policies, both of which I hope 
will involve the international community of nations. At the end of the 
day, the United States has to have a clear-eyed policy of its own, one 
that we are able to apply in a way that will help to protect our own 
national security. That is why I support what the administration and 
President Bush have been

[[Page S334]]

trying to accomplish in bringing the situation in Iraq to the point 
where we can conclude one way or the other that Saddam Hussein has 
complied with the international obligations he agreed to, and bring 
that matter to a conclusion to enforce those agreements, while at the 
same time preparing to resolve the situation in North Korea in a way 
that will not break out in some kind of military conflict but will 
result in a situation in which North Korea has dismantled its nuclear 
program, its weapons of mass destruction proliferation program, and its 
missile development program in an enforceable and verifiable way.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Dole). The Senator from Nevada.

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