NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT AND NORTH KOREA

The North Korea’s decision to shut down its main Yongbyon Nuclear facilities including the reprocessing facilities and to allow the IAEA personnel to conduct necessary monitoring and verifications in North Korea in return for massive aid in the from of Heavy Fuel Oil, security arrangements, lifting of the Us financial Sanctions and delisting from the list of Rogue states, will be a shot in the arm for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula . All the six nations involved in the negotiations viz. the two Koreas, the US, Japan, China and Russia can boast of having achieved a major break-through in the geo-political situation of the Korean peninsula which has been reeling under a war-like situation and frequent squirmishes ever since the armistice (July 1953) leaving Korea divided by a ‘no-man’s land’ along the 38th parallel.

The decision of Pyongyang to dismantle its Nuclear Programme for price in return from the negotiators may be termed as a strategic climb-down from its earlier articulated Policy ever since Pyongyang began to run a uranium-based Nuclear Weapons Programme freezing the plutonium-based ones leading to the Nuclear crisis of the late 2002 and its test-firing of long and medium range missiles in July last year. The agreement may even run into rough weather because of the blind domestic anti-US and anti-Japan feelings.

Though all the six nations have certainly played a proactive role in the whole matter, Cynics may ask whether this is the beginning of a ‘Reverse Nuclear Bullying’ where the countries claiming to have the Nuclear technology will try to terrorise the world and attempt to extract concessions of various sorts. If one looks at the huge aid promised to Pyongyang in return for this ‘noble’ gesture, there indeed rises an apprehension as to whether the Nuclear Programme can be artfully deployed to frighten the Nuclear Haves and extract concessions.

What Pyongyang has achieved now in the deal has all along been the forte of some other small nations as well. For instance, Pakistan has perfected this art of employing the Islamic terrorism and the perceived Nuclear Threat as well as its half-baked Nuclear capabilities to derive maximum military and financial aid from the western countries in general and the US in particular.

What is to be seen in this present Six-Nations’ Beijing Agreement is whether North Korea will show diplomatic sagacity and wisdom to abide by the Agreement or side step the Agreement in the future as in the case of past Pacts. Much of this will depend on the negotiation skills and statesmanship of the countries involved in broking this much needed Nuclear Agreement which will undoubtedly go a long way in dismantling the Nuclear Programme undertaken by various countries in isolation. If it was only a North Korean Nuclear Misadventure so far, the world will be relieved of yet another Nuclear Threat to the humanity