[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 32 (Thursday, February 27, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2906-S2909]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
North Korea
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from
Michigan for his courtesy and appreciate very much his comments with
regard to the budget and his extraordinary leadership with regard to
many issues involving our military challenges and priorities abroad.
Three weeks ago, I came to the Senate floor to address the
intensifying crisis in North Korea, a country and a situation that I
believe poses a risk to our Nation every bit as serious as that posed
by Saddam Hussein. At the time, I urged President Bush immediately and
directly to engage the North Korean Government in discussions to bring
about a verifiable end to that country's nuclear weapons program.
Unfortunately, the administration so far has failed to act, and, in
the meantime, the crisis in North Korea continues to escalate. In
recent days, we have seen reports that North Korea test-fired a new
missile, evidently that regime's idea of an inauguration present for
South Korea's incoming President. Just today, the newspapers contain
reports that North Korea has restarted one of the reactors at its
primary nuclear complex, a reactor that produces spent plutonium which
can then be converted into weapons grade material.
Let's be clear about what this latest provocation means. It means
North Korea could have a nuclear production line up and running and
producing weapons grade nuclear material in a matter of months. It
means the world's worst proliferator could have enough nuclear material
to produce six to eight nuclear weapons by summer.
According to Brent Scowcroft, President George Bush's National
Security Adviser, if we fail to act, it means ``We will soon face a
rampant plutonium production program that could spark a nuclear arms
race in Asia and provide deadly exports to America's most implacable
enemies.''
Unfortunately, the administration continues to insist on downplaying
this threat. These latest developments should confirm for anyone
watching that this is a crisis that only grows with each day the
administration fails to act. I come to the floor today to join with my
colleague, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, to urge
the administration to act now.
[[Page S2907]]
The first step toward action is to acknowledge there is a problem.
Based on a series of administration statements that play down the
threat posed by North Korea's actions, it appears many in the
administration are not even willing to take this step. For example, for
quite some time now, the administration refused to call this situation
even a crisis.
Last month, North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of the world's
nonproliferation efforts, and the response from Under Secretary of
State John Bolton, ``Not at all expected,'' and on Monday after the
missile test, the administration is quoted as saying that this was
``just a periodic event.'' Secretary Powell called the test ``not
surprising and fairly innocuous.''
So what do we do? I believe we must begin by making certain we are on
the same page as our allies. Failure to do so will only produce a
failed policy. Unfortunately, while the administration says the right
things about the importance of coalitions, it is unwilling or unable to
do the right things to build a coalition.
The administration continues to insist on multilateral discussions
with the North Koreans while our friends and others have consistently
and repeatedly urged President Bush to engage in bilateral talks.
Therefore, the administration must redouble its efforts with our allies
in South Korea, Japan, with the Chinese, and the Russians.
Second, we must make it clear to the North Koreans that separating
plutonium from the spent fuel rods at Yongbyon represents an
unacceptable threat to our collective security. We should tell North
Korea what we expect of them directly: That if it verifiably freezes
all nuclear activities, we and our allies are prepared to discuss the
full range of security issues affecting the peninsula, as well as other
steps North Korea can take to reenter the international community.
This is not news to the administration. In fact, the President
himself has suggested he is prepared to have just these kinds of talks.
Yet, I must say, regrettably, the administration still delays. It
allows the crisis to deepen and relations with our friends who are most
directly threatened by North Korea to suffer. In fact, what would
reward North Korea is to continue to stand by while it builds a nuclear
arsenal. The danger within North Korea is too urgent for the President
to delay this any further.
Finally, let me also take advantage of having my colleague, Senator
Levin, in the Chamber to discuss a recent exchange of letters with the
administration on this issue. Senators Levin, Biden, and I laid out our
concerns to the administration about its North Korean policies and
provided recommendations in a series of letters. I recently received a
response from Dr. Rice, and I ask unanimous consent to print our
January 31 letter and Dr. Rice's February 10 response in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC, January 31, 2003.
Dr. Condoleezza Rice,
National Security Adviser, The White House, Washington, DC.
Dear Dr. Rice: We wrote to you earlier this month about our
increased concern regarding the crises on the Korean
peninsula. Our concern has deepended significantly as a
result of a report in today's New York Times, which was
confirmed by the Administration, that the U.S. government has
evidence that North Korea is removing spent nuclear fuel rods
from storage. These rods, which had been securely stored
under IAEA monitoring from 1994 until recently, reportedly
contain enough plutonium to produce roughtly a half dozen
nuclear weapons.
As alarming as this report is, we are just as troubled by
the Administration's reported reaction to these developments.
Prior to this disclosure, the Administration said nothing
publicly or privately to Congress about these activities.
According to comments attributed to senior Administration
officials, the Administration has consciously decided to hold
this information in an effort to avoid creating a crisis
atmosphere and distracting international attention from Iraq.
This muted response to the world's worst proliferator
taking concrete steps that could permit it to build a nuclear
arsenal stands in stark contrast to the President's statement
on Tuesday evening that ``the gravest danger in the war on
terror . . . is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons.'' It is also increasingly
difficult to square the Administration's rehtroic on Iraq and
decades of U.S. policy aimed at discouraging the emergence of
declared nuclear powers with its continued downplaying of the
threat posed by North Korea's blatant disregard for
international rules on proliferation.
As the crisis with North Korea continues to escalate, the
Administration's policy has not gotten any clearer. The
Administration's lack of a clear, consistent policy and our
failure to take concrete steps to address this growing crisis
has produced consternation and confusion. One result is that
our allies in the region appear to be taking a course
directly at odds with the Administration's latest
pronouncements.
Given the stakes of the situation and the ongoing confusion
about the Administration's policy, we request that you come
brief the Senate as early as is practical to discuss that we
know about North Korea['s latest actions and what the United
States is doing in response.
We look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible
Sincerely,
Tom Daschle.
Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Carl Levin.
____
The White House,
Washington, DC, February 10, 2003.
Hon. Thomas A. Daschle,
Democratic Leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Leader: Thank you for your letter regarding U.S.
policy on North Korea.
I agree with you about the need to take effective action in
light of North Korea's recent actions to restart its nuclear
facilities at Yongbyon. The United States is working closely
with friends and allies toward our objective of the
elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons program in a
verifiable and irreversible manner.
However, I disagree with the assertion contained in your
letter that, prior to the New York Times article on January
31 on recent North Korean activities, ``the Administration
said nothing publicly or privately to Congress about these
activities.'' I also reject any suggestion that the
Administration consciously withheld information from Congress
to avoid distracting attention from Iraq.
The Administration has regularly briefed and consulted
Members of Congress regarding policy toward North Korea and
Iraq. For example, Deputy Secretary Armitage briefed Senators
on January 16 on recent intelligence on activities at North
Korean nuclear facilities and steps taken by the
Administration in response to these actions. He also
testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on
February 4.
In addition, the CIA has routinely provided briefings and
written reports to Members and its oversight Committees. CIA
briefed Senate Foreign Relations staff on three occasions in
December on North Korea WMD issues, and on January 29,
published an article on North Korean nuclear-related
activities in the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief (SEIB)
that addressed the issues discussed in the New York Times on
January 31. The January 29 article was one of nine such
articles published in the SEIB on North Korea in January
alone. The SEIB is delivered daily to the CIA's oversight
Committees and to the Office of Senate Security where it is
available to Senators and appropriately-cleared staff.
In the days and weeks ahead, it is my hope that we can work
together to address the challenges we face on a range of
critical national security issues, including North Korea and
Iraq.
Sincerely,
Condoleezza Rice,
Assistant to the President
for National Security Affairs.
Mr. DASCHLE. Unfortunately, little in Dr. Rice's letter addresses our
policy concerns. Rather, the bulk of her comments are dedicated to
rebutting a claim in our letter that Congress has not been adequately
consulted about some explosive findings revealed in a January 31 New
York Times article.
The article stated that the U.S. Government has evidence North Korea
had begun moving spent fuel rods out of a secure storage area, a
development that was subsequently confirmed by the administration.
Movement of spent fuel rods would either suggest that North Korea was
getting ready to reprocess that fuel to build new weapons or was trying
to hide the spent fuel from the international community. In either
case, this is a very significant finding that we believed then and
still believe deserves to be brought to the Congress's attention.
While Dr. Rice rightly points out that Congress has been briefed on
North Korea issues generally, including a briefing by Deputy Secretary
Armitage on January 16, we are not aware of any administration briefing
that provided us with information on this specific development prior to
the New York Times story. And in recent testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Secretary Armitage implicitly
acknowledged that fact.
[[Page S2908]]
The reason to bring this up is because we are facing a crisis on the
Korean peninsula, a crisis with extremely high stakes, a crisis that
demands robust American response, a crisis that demands we be clear
with each other and with the American people. Given the stakes of the
situation and the ongoing confusion about the administration's policy,
we should expect no less.
I yield the floor.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, will the Democratic leader yield just for
some questions?
Mr. DASCHLE. Before I yield the floor, I am happy to yield to the
distinguished Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Is the Senator aware of a statement which was made before
us--I do not know how he would be, but let me brief him on it. We had
the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in front of the Armed
Services Committee a couple of days ago, and we asked him whether or
not in his judgment there was a crisis on the Korean peninsula because
of the actions of North Korea in removing these seals from the spent
fuel, eliminating the cameras and kicking out the inspectors. Even
though the administration is unwilling to put the label ``crisis'' on
what is going on on the Korean peninsula, Admiral Jacoby was more than
willing to say, yes, this is a crisis.
I am wondering if the Democratic leader would agree that part of the
problem that we have in dealing with the North Korean situation is the
unwillingness to see it for what it is, which is a major proliferation
threat when there is a country that has been the world's greatest
proliferator, including Libya and Iran, missiles and missile
technology, when there is a country with a nuclear program that they
acknowledge removes the inspectors from its country, whether or not
that would represent progress if we could just at least get the
administration to acknowledge what the head of the Defense Intelligence
Agency says, which is that we have a crisis on the Korean peninsula?
Mr. DASCHLE. I think the Senator asks a very good question. This is
more than just a semantical issue. Whether one calls it a crisis, an
emergency, whatever volatile term one wishes to apply, clearly this
deserves more of a response than this administration has provided.
I wonder what would have happened if Iraq had been the country with
the evidence now to suggest that weapons of mass destruction, nuclear
weapons, would be produced with the degree of certainty that we now see
them in North Korea, what would the administration have said to that?
If Iraq had fired a test missile within the last 2 weeks, what would
the administration have said of that? My hunch, is that they would have
used the word ``crisis'' and then some.
They have already claimed, of course, that North Korea is a member of
the so-called axis of evil, an unfortunate term in my opinion. But to
avoid using the word ``crisis,'' I believe, lends a real serious
credibility question to the administration's foreign policy with regard
to the region. This is a crisis. Every expert has acknowledged that it
is a crisis. Unless we are willing to recognize the reality of the
implications of this crisis, I believe the crisis will only worsen.
The Senator from Michigan has made a very important point with his
question.
Mr. LEVIN. In addition to looking a problem square in the eye and not
sugarcoating it, if we are going to solve it, another part of the
administration's platform relative to Korea, or approach to the Korean
problem, is to say that the multilateral approach is the right
approach. I am always glad to hear when the administration is willing
to work multilaterally. I have been a critic of the administration
because their unilateral rhetoric activities, it seems to me, have been
counterproductive in many parts of the world. So whenever the
administration talks about a multilateral approach or consulting with
allies and friends, that is good news. But when they do the
consultation, when they talk to South Korea, both its former President
and its new President, as well as when they talk to China, as well as
when they talk to Japan, as well as when they talk to other allies in
the area, they are told the same thing. When they do use the
multilateral approach, they are told: Engage in direct discussions with
North Korea. As a matter of fact, the representative of the new
President of South Korea, the special envoy of new President Roh,
visited us. His name is Dr. Chyung, and he visited with us on February
3.
That was, again, the open advice, he said, of the South Korean
Government, is to have the United States talk directly with North Korea
so that they can hear from us what our concerns are; so that both sides
can avoid any kind of miscalculations; so that we do not fuel the
paranoia this isolated regime has. They are paranoid. They are
isolated. They actually believe we might strike them with one of our
preemptive strikes. They actually believe it.
So the advice we are getting when we talk to our allies and follow
this multilateral approach is engage with North Korea, and yet we
refuse to do so.
I am wondering whether the Senator would agree that it is not only
important that we consult with allies, not necessarily follow the
advice but at least give serious consideration to the advice they give
us when they talk to us about a direct engagement with North Korea to
avoid miscalculation, so that the North can hear directly from us what
our major concerns are?
Mr. DASCHLE. I appreciate the question posed by the Senator from
Michigan. This whole experience has turned logic on its head. We have
220,000 troops in the gulf. We are told that there is almost an
inevitability of war. We are told that the reason for this near
inevitability is because of weapons of mass destruction that we have
yet to find in Iraq and because of an unstable leader in Iraq.
These assertions have required the administration to go to great
lengths to try to prove that their findings are ones that could be
recognized by the world community. With all of their best effort, they
have yet to demonstrate to the satisfaction of some of our allies that
the threat exists to the extent the administration perceives it, and
yet there is a clear set of circumstances that are undeniable in North
Korea. There is a very questionable leader spurring development of
nuclear weapons in the most rapid way, which we know could be sold
quickly to terrorist organizations and used against us and the world
community. Yet this administration chooses to ignore it.
The Senator asks the question, why would we not engage the community
and recognize the importance of confronting North Korea? The
administration says the answer to that is they do not want to reward
bad behavior.
I argue that we are rewarding bad behavior by ignoring the
circumstances as this administration has chosen to do. What could be
worse behavior than what is going on right now?
As I understand it, we began to reship food assistance to the North
Korean people within the last few days. We have no real guarantee that
aid is going to get to the people, but it is a very unusual message
they are sending to both Iraq and North Korea. Of all those who would
be most confused it would be our allies. How do they explain all of
this? What credibility do we have with them as we attempt to
rationalize this odd position we find ourselves in today?
I appreciate the question, and I would simply say to my colleague
that it begs further explanation by the administration which, again,
because they refuse to call this a crisis, they have yet to provide.
Mr. LEVIN. This administration has blown hot and cold when it comes
to policy relative to North Korea.
I just have one final question.
The Democratic leader points out just how confusing a policy it is,
not just for North Korea but for our own allies. Our ally with the most
at stake on the Korean peninsula is South Korea. They could be
destroyed if there is a miscalculation. Their capital is within range
of tens of thousands of artillery of North Korea.
On March 6, 2001, on the eve of a summit between then South Korean
President Kim Jong-Il and President Bush, Secretary of State Powell
said we plan to engage with North Korea and to pick up where President
Clinton and his administration left off.
Within 24 hours was the Secretary of State's statement that we were
going to engage with North Korea and pick
[[Page S2909]]
up where the Clinton administration left off because the Clinton
administration obtained the framework agreement that resulted in the
canning of that very material which is so dangerous which contains
plutonium. Within 24 hours, at the summit the next day, President Bush
basically said: We are not going to have any discussions with North
Korea. We are not picking up where the Clinton administration left off.
We do not trust North Korea.
No kidding. That is a mild statement, that we do not trust North
Korea. If we did not talk to people we did not trust, we would not be
talking to half of the world, including some of the most dangerous
people in the world.
Talking to people does not mean we are going to reward anything. It
simply means they will hear directly, eyeball to eyeball, from us as to
what our concerns are, and also why we do not threaten them, and why,
if they will terminate their nuclear program, they can rest assured
they will get an agreement from us that there is not going to be any
active aggression against them.
The blowing hot and cold, the erratic policy, the undermining not
just of our own Secretary of State 24 hours after he said we would
continue a policy, but undermining our South Korean allies with so much
at stake, it seems to me has contributed to a very uncertain policy on
the Korean peninsula, has sowed the seeds of confusion, and fueled and
contributed to the paranoia that already existed in spades in North
Korea.
I have been to Yongbyon, the place in North Korea where they were
canning those fuel rods, where they had sealed them. I don't know that
any other Member of the Congress got there, but I got there a couple
years ago. I watched the International Atomic Energy Agency as they
were sealing those fuel rods. That was a very positive thing to watch,
to actually see, under IAEA inspection and supervision, those
incredibly dangerous nuclear materials being canned instead of
threatening to the rest of the world as potential proliferated
material, to actually see it put under the supervision of the IAEA.
That is now out the window. We are starting from scratch. I
understate my feelings on the matter when I say the Senator, the
Democratic leader here, has so accurately stated the fact that we have
a problem. Step 1 is to recognize we indeed have a crisis. Step 2 is
not just to consult with allies but to seriously consider what they
recommend when they talk about having direct engagement with the North
Koreans.
I thank the Democratic leader for his constant determination to keep
this Korean peninsula crisis in front of us. We cannot lose sight of
it. It is a greater threat than Iraq because in North Korea you have a
known proliferator who has removed the inspectors and who has nuclear
material which could be so easily distributed, shipped, or sold to
people who could do great harm with it.
I thank my friend from South Dakota.
Mr. DASCHLE. I thank the distinguished Senator from Michigan.
We can learn a lot from history. History, for most of my lifetime,
involved a cold war, a cold war with an archenemy--the Soviet Union--
which had thousands of nuclear warheads pointed toward the United
States. They posed an imminent threat that could at any moment destroy
all of civilization.
We made the choice, for good reason, Republican and Democratic
administrations made the choice, that rather than engage in conflict,
we would contain, negotiate, disarm, and ultimately wear down those
leaders of the Soviet Union. That is ultimately what happened. The
Soviet Union collapsed, negotiations for disarmament continued, and I
recognize the contribution of many Presidents, from Harry Truman on.
But it was Ronald Reagan who said: Trust but verify. He did not say:
I don't trust the Soviet Union, so I'm not going to enter into dialog
with them. He was criticized at times, but he said: I'm going to engage
in dialog. I'm going to continue the effort of my predecessors. I'm
going to trust. But then I'm going to verify.
What the Senator from Michigan noted is that a couple of years ago
that verification process was underway. We trusted. And we verified.
His site visit was an indication of that verification.
I can only hope that those responsible for the day-to-day decisions
made with regard to U.S. foreign policy will recognize the importance
of past precedent, that we engage our enemies, we engage those whom
there is ample reason to distrust, but we recognize that without some
communication, without some engagement, the only other option is
conflict.
The only other option is to see what is happening today. Nuclear
weapons are being constructed. Nuclear weapons are being stockpiled.
Nuclear weapons could be shipped. Nuclear weapons could be used not
only in the region but against this country, as well. Every day we
delay, every day we lack the will to confront and communicate, every
day we lack the desire to verify, every day we create a problem more
complex for future leaders and for future American policy.
I hope this administration will very carefully reconsider their
position. I hope they will listen to our allies. I hope they will
engage the North Koreans. I hope they can give us greater appreciation
with greater clarity of their intentions with regard to that part of
the world.
I yield the floor.
____________________