Disarmament may take ‘up to 15 years’

WASHINGTON: As the Trump administration races to start talks with North Korea on what it calls “rapid denuclearisation”, a top federal government adviser who has repeatedly visited the North’s sprawling atomic complex is warning that the disarmament process could take far longer, up to 15 years.

The adviser, Siegfried S Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, and now a Stanford professor, argues that the best the United States can hope for is a phased denuclearisation that goes after the most dangerous parts of the North’s programme first.

The disarmament steps and timetable are laid out in a new report, circulated recently in Washington, that Prof Hecker compiled with two colleagues at Stanford’s Centre for International Security and Cooperation. Prof Hecker has toured that nation’s secretive labyrinth of nuclear plants four times and remains the only US scientist to see its facility for enriching uranium, a bomb fuel. US intelligence agencies had missed the plant’s construction.

Prof Hecker’s time frame stands in stark contrast with what the United States initially demanded, on what could be a key sticking point in any summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.

Two US delegations, one in Singapore and one in North Korea, are attempting to work out a meeting between the two leaders. Mr Trump cancelled the meeting in a letter to Mr Kim on Thursday but has been working to reconstitute it ever since, posting Twitter messages that say he is confident the North Korean economy will prosper if an accord is reached.

The delegation in Singapore is discussing the logistics of a meeting, to be held June 12 or afterward. The other, led by Sung Kim, a US diplomat with long North Korea experience, is meeting senior officials of the North Korean Foreign Ministry at the Demilitarised Zone to work on the wording of what kind of communiqué might be issued by the two leaders. But the White House and State Department have said nothing about the details of those discussions.

In an interview, Prof Hecker said he was making the Stanford study public to advance discussion of a complicated topic that will be at the heart of Mr Trump’s encounter with Mr Kim in Singapore, if that meeting happens. So far, the denuclearisation agenda has been a mix of bold claims by the administration about what it will demand, and vague generalities from the North.

“We’re talking about dozens of sites, hundreds of buildings, and thousands of people,” Prof Hecker said on Friday.

Prof Hecker cautioned that his team’s roadmap left room for many knotty points of negotiation — such as where to draw the line between civilian and military nuclear activities. At first, the Trump administration said the North must give up all enrichment of uranium, which can fuel not only bombs but reactors that illuminate cities.

But Mr Trump exited the Iran nuclear deal this month because it allowed the country to produce atomic fuel after 2030, which he said was an unacceptable risk. It is unclear how he could ban Iran from peaceful production, yet allow North Korea to do the same.