The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [152]
THE COMING OF THE INSPECTORS
From its headquarters in the towers of the United Nations complex in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency, created in 1957, runs the world's early-warning system against the spread of nuclear weapons. A semi-independent UN technical agency, it reports to the Security Council but is governed by a thirty-five-nation Board of Governors, in which the United States and other major powers have a large voice. Since the establishment of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, the most important task of the IAEA has been to send its multinational teams of inspectors to verify that nonnuclear weapon states are keeping their commitments not to manufacture or possess nuclear weapons.
Until 1991, the IAEA limited itself to checking civilian nuclear facilities and materials that NPT signatories reported in voluntary declarations to the agency. The aftermath of the U.S.-led Operation Desert Storm, however, disclosed that Iraq, which was an NPT signatory, had carried on an intensive and sophisticated nuclear weapons program at secret sites adjacent to those being inspected by the agency. The impact on the IAEA was profound.
In the face of withering criticism for ineffectiveness and timidity, the IAEA under Director General Hans Blix underwent an upheaval in personnel and a sea change in attitudes, from complacency to alertness about suspicious nuclear activities. Despite the misgivings of some third-world members of the IAEA board, Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister, established the right to accept intelligence information supplied by the United States and other member states in its investigations, and the right to demand access to suspicious facilities through mandatory "special inspections."
Starting in September 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, the United States began supplying intelligence information to Blix and senior aides at his Vienna headquarters. In time, Washington also provided the services of its incomparably sophisticated national laboratories and supplied photos from U.S. spy satellites that were rarely shown to outsiders. Armed for the first time with extensive independent information about the nuclear programs that they were checking, the IAEA's leaders and its corps of international inspectors were determined not to be hoodwinked or embarrassed again. North Korea became the first test case of their new capabilities and attitudes.
For six days in mid-May 1992, Blix led a team to North Korea to establish relations with the country's leaders and prepare for full-scale IAEA inspections. After preliminary discussions in Pyongyang, Blix and his party were taken to the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. Despite the fact that North Korea had not joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty until 1985, the small Soviet-supplied research reactor there had been under regular IAEA inspection since 1977, at Soviet insistence. But the inspectors had formerly been allowed only in the area of the research reactor and had been carefully kept away from other parts of the growing complex. Not even visiting Russians were permitted to stray from the small research reactor they had supplied. As far as is known, Blix and his three technically expert companions were the first outsiders ever to see, from ground level, what the American surveillance cameras had been peering down on for nearly a decade.
Taking no chances that the IAEA chief would miss something of importance, U.S. officials provided intelligence briefings for Blix and his top aides in September 1991, March 1992, and on May 7, immediately before his departure. On the final occasion, Blix was given a "virtual reality" tour of Yongbyon using advanced computer modeling based on aerial photographs.