Submission of North Korea Nuclear Crisis to U.N. Possible

Submission of North Korea Nuclear Crisis to U.N. Possible. April. 12, 2005 23:25. by Seung-Ryun Kim srkim@donga.com.

U.N. Ambassador appointee John Bolton implied at the Senate Committee Hearing on his nomination on April 11 that the U.N. could set out to apply sanctions against North Korea.

He added, “The fact that there is a possibility that the issue can be submitted to the U.N. Security Council is significant as a warning against North Korea and other countries that try to acquire WMD.”

If the Security Council deals with the North Korea nuclear issue, it means that the current frame of the six-party talks will break and a new international discourse on sanctioning North Korea will begin.

Taking notice of such worries, Bolton reminded that the “intervention of the Security Council” had already been agreed to unanimously by the members of the IAEA. “The IAEA, a U.N. body, decided on U.N. intervention right after North Korea seceded from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003, but it did not carry out the resolution into action because of the launch of the six-party talks,” he added.

In addition, on the premise that the “six-party talks are a negotiation method that President George W. Bush thinks is right” Bolton commented on the future of the six-party talks, saying, “[We] have been waiting a long time, more than 10 months, after the third meeting (last August).”

As expected, the three-day long hearing began with the Democrats’ aggressive barrage of questions on Bolton’s past actions and remarks. In particular, Senator Barbara Boxer raised the intensity of her attack by revealing videotape in which Bolton discussed “U.N. futility” in 1994. “Of the 38 floors of the U.N. building, nothing would be different even if 10 floors were gone.”

Bolton skewed the attack by saying, “I used that expression to get the attention of the audience; I was trying to point out the bureaucratization of the U.N.”

On the suspicion that he tried to discharge the U.S. State Department’s WMD analyst Christian Westermann, with whom he had a conflict with on judging Cuba’s chemical weapons program, Bolton explained, “The cause of the conflict was not the disagreement on information analysis, but his work attitude.”