@@ Expert: Iran has absolute right to enrich uranium @@
Arash
September 18, 2004
Iran has the "inalienable right" to acquire nuclear reactors or
uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
North Korea Nuke Mess Made by Bush
Dr. James Gordon Prather
Nuclear weapons physicist
gpra...@worldnetdaily.com
Whe Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) recognizes the "inalienable
right" of all signatories to "the fullest possible exchange of equipment,
materials and scientific and technological information" related to the "use
of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."
That means that Iran has the "inalienable right" to acquire nuclear reactors
or uranium-enrichment centrifuges from Russia.
On the other hand - thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton - the Democratic Republic
of North Korea (DPRK) is no-longer a NPT signatory, and hence, has no such
"inalienable right."
Each no-nuke signatory agrees to conclude with the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) a Safeguards agreement. All "source" and "special
fissionable materials" as well as any activities involving them are to be
made subject to the IAEA Safeguards agreement. The IAEA is thereafter
responsible for preventing their "diversion."
That means that Iran is required to subject to IAEA Safeguards all uranium,
plutonium and thorium - in whatever form and however obtained - as well as
all activities wherein safeguarded materials are transformed, produced or
processed.
On the other hand, - thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton - the DPRK has no such
requirement.
Under Article II, each no-nuke signatory agrees "not to manufacture or
otherwise acquire nuclear weapons."
Iran, in agreeing to an Additional Protocol to their Safeguards Agreement,
has essentially given the IAEA the authority to police that agreement.
But - thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton - the DPRK is no longer subject to the
NPT and can now develop, test, manufacture and sell nukes.
Alas, until more no-nuke signatories follow the DPRK example and withdraw
from the NPT, the Koreans will just have terrorists as customers for their
nukes.
Candidate Kerry castigated President Bush last week, arguing that his
preoccupation with Iraq had allowed the current DPRK nuke mess to develop.
He claimed Bush had "pulled the rug out from under Kim Dae Jung," then
president of South Korea, by refusing to endorse the Clinton-Kim policy of
engagement with the DPRK.
The basis for the Clinton-Kim policy had been the U.S.-IAEA-DPRK Agreed
Framework of 1994.
In 1992, the IAEA had essentially accused DPRK of having a clandestine nuke
program.
The DPRK denied that it did, but agreed under the Agreed Framework to
"freeze" all its nuclear programs, including abandoning the construction of
additional Russian-supplied reactors from whose spent-fuel weapons-grade
plutonium could be recovered, and make them subject to IAEA Safeguards. In
return, an international consortium - led by South Korea - would construct
in the DPRK two free conventional nuclear power plants.
In the interim, Clinton had agreed to provide 500,000 tons of free fuel oil,
annually, to the DPRK.
Say what? Provide a half-million tons of free fuel oil every year for at
least five more years to a Commie country that - technically - we have been
at war with since 1950?
What to do?
How about this? In the Agreed Framework we promised on a stack of Bibles
that we wouldn't attack them with nukes so long as they remained a no-nuke
NPT-signatory. Why not provoke them into withdrawing from the NPT?
Why not?
First, tell South Korea's Kim in March 2001 that President Bush and
Secretary Powell would not continue the talks with North Korea
representatives begun the year before by President Clinton and Secretary
Albright.
Next, have Bush say this about DPRK in his 2002 State of the Union Address:
"Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening
America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of
these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know
their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons
of mass destruction, while starving its citizens
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil,
arming to threaten the peace of the world."
Finally, in October 2002, have some anonymous State Department munchkin tell
a few media sycophants that some anonymous DPRK official admitted to him at
a cocktail party that they had a clandestine uranium-nuke program.
Never mind that the DPRK vehemently denies to this day having any such
program. Never mind that to this day our intelligence community hasn't got
the foggiest notion where this clandestine uranium-nuke program may be
hiding. Cancel the free fuel-oil to DPRK.
And launch a preemptive attack at the other end of the axis of evil.
Well, that did it. DPRK withdrew from the NPT and has since recovered enough
weapons-grade plutonium from its frozen spent fuel to make a half-dozen
nukes.
You know, Kerry may have a point.
* Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing
official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal
Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the
Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the
Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for
national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy
Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a
nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=3607
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/archives.asp?AUTHOR_ID=35