Center for International Policy

As printed in The Korea Times

June 21 2004

NK Expert Pushes Energy Pact to End Nuke Crisis

Energy cooperation between Seoul, Pyongyang and other regional neighbors is the key to achieving a complete resolution to the nuclear standoff, according to visiting North Korea expert Selig Harrison.

Harrison, director of the Asia program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, said the only way to convince North Korea to fully denuclearize is to help it resolve the power shortage it has suffered since China and Russia cut energy aid at the end of the Cold War.

In a paper he will present to the 11th LAWASIA Energy Law International Conference, which opens on Tuesday in Seoul, Harrison proposes a gas pipeline be constructed from off Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East via North Korea to the South as a final incentive to get Pyongyang to give up all its nuclear deterrents.

``Such a pipeline could be an economic salvation to North Korea because it would not only mean royalty payments for the pipeline passing through North Korea, but it would also allow it to tap into the pipeline for power stations and fertilizer plants,’’ he told The Korea Times.

Harrison said the pipeline deal could only be reached at the final stage of negotiations after Pyongyang had already frozen its nuclear programs in exchange for a security guarantee, the lifting of economic sanctions and other energy aid. ``It would be the kind of piece d’resistance that would finally get North Korea to take of all its clothes,’’ he explained.

A strong critic of U.S. administration’s policy towards North Korea, Harrison, however, saw little prospect for progress at the six-party nuclear talks in Beijing while President George W. Bush remains in the White House.

He said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is constrained in compromising over the nuclear issue by hawks within his government, while Bush is set on achieving regime change in Pyongyang and will not offer rewards that could boost its longevity.

The two countries will stay locked in a standoff until North Korea becomes impatient and begins nuclear testing or Bush is voted out, said Harrison, who in 1972 became one of the first Americans to visit North Korea.

The Sakhalin gas field, with proven reserves of 915 billion cubic meters, is currently being explored by U.S. firm Exxon-Mobil, but Washington has been unwilling to allow consideration of the pipeline through North Korea. Harrison said giving the nod to Exxon-Mobil would be ``the most dramatic way that the U.S. could show it is ready to completely resolve the nuclear issue with North Korea.’’

Besides the U.S. presidential election, another important juncture in the nuclear dispute will come in December when the U.S. reconsiders the fate of the suspended Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO) project to build two light-water nuclear reactors in the North. Harrison believed Bush might seek to scrap the project, which was agreed to as part of a 1994 pact for North Korea to freeze its nuclear programs.

He said South Korea should seek to keep the KEDO alive, adding that it might also play an important role in achieving a final nuclear dismantlement by Pyongyang.