NEGATIVE/ROGUES/NORTH KOREA

NORTH KOREA IS NOT A MISSILE OR WMD THREAT

PEACE IS AT HAND AFTER RECENT ACTIONS TOWARDS NORTH KOREA

EDITORIAL, The Christian Science Monitor September 20, 1999, Pg. 8 HEADLINE: Doing Deals With N. Korea // ln-10/99-acs

Last week, with the US lifting many economic sanctions against North Korea, the war didn't officialy end. But with Americans now allowed to do business with the Communist "hermit" nation, peace may be at hand.

NORTH KOREA PUT ITS MISSILE PROGRAM ON HOLD TO PURSUE NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE USA

William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca, the World Policy Institute Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2000, SECTION: Opinion; Part M; Page 2; HEADLINE: THE WORLD / MISSILE DEFENSE; PENTAGON SPELLS 'SAFETY' N-M-D //ACS-LN-2/4/2000

North Korea, which carried out a missile test in late 1998, put its missile program on hold to pursue negotiations with the United States after former Defense Secretary William J. Perry's visit last May.

NORTH KOREAN MISSILE MOVES ARE ONLY A FORM OF POLITICAL POSTURING, NOT A REAL MILITARY THREAT

Vladimir SoIntsev TASS, July 26, 1999, HEADLINE: No need to raise ballyhoo about NKorean missile programme // Inu-acs

Asked what aims, to his mind, are pursued by the Pyongyang missile programme, the Russian expert [Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Professor Sergei Blagovolin ] expressed opinion that this is linked to several factors. They include "demonstration of the regime's efficiency and achievements of the country", "a potential possibility to trade if not in rockets than in knowhow", the more so since North Korea already sold missiles, although less advanced than now, to some countries and, last but not least, "new possibilities for political haggling".

NORTH KOREAN MISSILE PROGRAM IS NOT A SERIOUS MILITARY THREAT

Vladimir SoIntsev TASS, July 26, 1999, HEADLINE: No need to raise ballyhoo about NKorean missile programme // Inu-acs

The North Korean missile programme "should not be overestimated and turned into a threat really existing," said on Sunday in an interview with Itar-Tass deputy director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Professor Sergei Blagovolin.

NORTH KOREA WILL DISARM BY 2003

Douglas Roche, 1996, former Member of Parliament (1972-1984); and was Canada's Ambassador for Disarmament to the U.N (1984-1989); and Chairman of the United Nations Disarmament Committee at the Forty - Third General As in 1988; and presently visiting professor at the University of Alberta. THE ULTIMATE EVIL - THE FIGHT TO BAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS // GJL

Despite its extreme poverty, North Korea may possess the ability to deploy one, or possibly two, nuclear weapons using plutonium that Washington believes it produced in 1989 at a research reactor and reprocessing plant at Yongbyon. Although North Korea signed the NPT in 1985, it didn't permit international inspection until 1992, giving rise to the belief that technicians extracted enough plutonium to manufacture one or two nuclear weapons. North Korea possesses a variety of shortrange, nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Currently, its nuclear program is frozen under an agreement with the United States, in which, in return for international financing of two nuclear reactors by 2003, North Korea has pledged to dismantle nuclear weapons facilities and allow international inspection.

NORTH KOREA WILL NOT INFLICT A NUCLEAR STRIKE ON JAPAN OR THE USA

Vladimir SoIntsev TASS, July 26, 1999, HEADLINE: No need to raise ballyhoo about NKorean missile programme // Inu-acs

According to the Russian expert [Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Professor Sergei Blagovolin), he does not believe that North Korea can inflict a nuclear strike on Japan or the United States

NORTH KOREA HAS SHUT DOWN ITS PLUTONIUM PRODUCING NUCLEAR PLANTS

Jun Kwan-Woo, Agence France Presse December 15, 1999, HEADLINE: Landmark deal signed towards curbing NKorea's nuclear ambitions // acs-ln-12-28-99

The 1994 Geneva accord, called the "Agreed Framework," was aimed at offering a safer energy supplies for the North in return for a halt in the production of weapons-grade plutonium in its Soviet-built nuclear reactors.

The North shut down its plutonium-generating graphite-moderated reactors under the pact.