If it's not Port-au-Prince, it's Pyongyang. Having grappled furiously with Bosnia, and then Haiti, the White House last week discovered yet another confrontation about to boil over. Despite repeated warnings, North Korea had begun discharging spent fuel from a 5-megawatt reactor without agreeing to adequate supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Unless the IAEA is allowed to take samples of the fuel for future analysis, the international community may never know how much bomb material Pyongyang has already extracted from the reactor over the years. And if North Korea diverts the fuel away from IAEA safeguards, it may be able to add four or five nuclear bombs to the one or two the CIA estimates it already may have made. All of this, Defense Secretary William Perry warned as administration officials pondered alternatives, amounts to a "very substantial near-term crisis."
The showdown now stands at a turning point. If North Korea, which allowed IAEA inspectors to complete some related nuclear-safeguards inspections, agrees to suspend the discharge of reactor fuel or allow the IAEA to secure samples, the administration is ready to convene high-level talks to discuss economic and political ties in exchange for a verifiable nonnuclear commitment. If it does not, the administration may have to turn to the United Nations Security Council for sanctions and a confrontation that no one wants.
