The reactor had been shut down since 1994 under an agreement with the Clinton administration, but as tensions with the Bush administration have escalated, North Korea recently said it would “resume normal operations.” Under the ‘94 agreement, Pyongyang was forced to place as many as 8,000 fuel rods in storage. Now U.S. officials fear that North Korea may begin “reprocessing” the rods into weapons-grade plutonium, which would allow Pyongyang to produce nuclear bombs or sell the material to terrorists or terror-supporting states. ElBaradei also made some of his most extensive public comments about Iran’s nuclear program since returning from a visit to its civilian nuclear sites last Sunday. The existence of these sites was revealed late last year through satellite imagery. But ElBaradei suggested that, contrary to reports, Tehran might be willing to sign a new IAEA inspection protocol after all, easing concerns that Iran has a secret agenda for building a nuclear weapons program. And on Iraq, ElBaradei indicated that he and Hans Blix want to continue with inspections.
NEWSWEEK: How concerned are you about North Korea’s restarting of its reactor?
Mohamed ElBaradei: We would obviously be much more concerned if they start the reprocessing. What we’re talking about now is the five-megawatt power reactor. That is bad. But it would be a disaster, in my view, if they start to reprocess. That would mean they would then get their hands on lots of plutonium.
They haven’t started doing that?
There is lots of activity going on in that facility. But I don’t think we have concluded that they have started the reprocessing. That would be the real serious breach.
How will you know that they have begun reprocessing?
Probably just through movement. But we will not be sure unless we are on the ground. I don’t know whether any analyst would come to that conclusion just based on satellite or human intelligence. I think you need to be there to conclude that.
What led up to this moment? U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, visiting the region, said on Tuesday that it seemed the North Koreans were not restarting the reactor. He called that a “wise choice.” He seems to have been caught flatfooted.
No, they have been saying they were going to restart the five-megawatt reactor. I think this is not surprising. They have been saying that since they moved out of the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] … I think this is their answer to the suspension of fuel shipments [The Bush administration cut off fuel-oil shipments in response to North Korea’s withdrawal from the 1994 agreement] and to show that from their perspective they are serious about the road they are taking. I am not surprised about that. Nor do I think this will have much implication for the solution to the problem. But it is a serious issue.
Is there a way to determine from the air, without inspectors on the ground, through what the Americans call “national technical means”–satellite imagery and so on–that they have gone ahead and started the reprocessing? U.S. intelligence officials say there are telltale signs of plutonium reprocessing detectable from the air.
I really do not know that. I doubt if you would know for sure. You probably would just do it based on if you were to see spent fuel moving to the reprocessing plant, for example. That’s an indication. But whether in fact you can actually determine from the air or space that they have started the reprocessing, that I do not know.
I’d like to know what your conclusions about Iran’s nuclear facilities are, based on your trip there. They are a signatory to the NPT, which requires them to pursue nuclear development only for civilian purposes.
Iran continues to affirm that their program is for peaceful nuclear activities.
Do you believe that?
Well, we will have to do it thorough the inspections. They are saying they have been subject to a nuclear-supplier boycott, and they need electricity. They have a plan for 6,000 megawatts for 2020. This is their goal. This is not for me to question. Our goal is to make sure that their program is under safeguards and that we will get the full transparency in Iran as we would like to get into any other country, particularly one with a sophisticated nuclear program….
Based on your discussions with Iranian officials, will they accede to whatever the IAEA requires?
I think, I mean I hope, they will understand the importance of giving us a new authority [to inspect]. They said they would give this serious consideration.
You mean the protocol signed in 1997, which allows more intrusive inspections?
Yes, exactly.
They said they’re giving this serious consideration?
Yes, correct.
If they sign the new protocol, would that be enough to determine whether or not theirs is indeed purely a civilian program?
Well, it would give us a lot of access to sites. And again it would give us much more ability to determine whether a country has any undeclared activities, plus a better system to verify declared activities. Our role is to make sure that whatever they have is to be for peaceful purposes.
Will you be issuing a report to the Security Council about Iran?
No, we only go to the Security Council if there is a violation of an NPT obligation. That’s not the case in Iran.
Let’s turn to Iraq. We now seem to be in a situation where the Bush administration intends to go to war. The prevailing view at the White House is that inspections have not worked and cannot work in Iraq. You yourself have noted in the past how Iraqi inspections have been more intrusive than anywhere else. What are your concerns about what this message does to the future of the IAEA and inspections regimes and so forth?
In the nuclear area, inspections continue to work in Iraq. We eliminated their program in the ’90s, again through nuclear inspections. In North Korea, we discovered that they have undeclared plutonium. I’ve said in the Security Council that in the nuclear area, inspections can move forward even without 100 percent or full cooperation of the inspected state. That’ s true. That’s different from chemical and biological, which is probably much more cooperation-dependent. I am obviously concerned that in our rush to verify Iraq’s disarmament we should not denigrate the inspection process. It is the cornerstone of the whole nonproliferation issue. We cannot just say if a country is not fully transparent that inspection does not work. That’s not our experience, and that’s not going to be a helpful message to come from the Iraq situation.
There seems to be something of a disconnect between what the Bush administration was saying months ago about Iraq’s ongoing nuclear program and what you say you haven’t found. Then, the rhetoric was “we don’t want the smoking gun to be mushroom cloud.” I have to ask: was their initial information bad, or did you miss something? It doesn’t seem to add up.
Again, there was lots of concern before we started inspections in Iraq. There was concern about buildings, aluminum-tube importation, importation of uranium from Africa. And this is precisely why inspection is useful. Because systemically we try to go through all these different concerns and then weed them out or confirm them. And that’s what happened. For example, there were a lot of concerns about new-building construction in former nuclear sites. That we know is no longer a concern, we have surveyed them all. On the aluminum tubes, we are making progress, we are not there yet. We are going through a lot of analysis.
When will you and Hans Blix be giving a report to the Security Council on Iraq? People were talking about March 7….
It’s still being discussed. There is not a fixed date. It could be the seventh still. It could be the fifth. The discussions are going on in New York. But we might be asked to give the report a couple of days early. Everybody’s trying to see, frankly, how they can avert a war and continue to try to work with the inspections. To me a couple of days here or there is not important. The important thing is to continue to report substantive progress. If both of us, Blix and I, continue to report substantive progress, I find it difficult for people to say, “Let’s scuttle the process.”
Blix has said in recent days that the Iraqis have not been fully cooperative in his area, chemical and biological weapons. What about your assessment?
We are seeing increasing cooperation on the part of Iran.
You mean on the part of Iraq?
Yes, Iraq. In our area they are cooperating.
But not full cooperation?
Well, we haven’t seen any area where they have declined to cooperate with us. However, we would probably like to see more transparency, maybe that’s how I can put it. Coming forward with additional documents, if they have them, maybe having more scientists to be interviewed in private….
