At last there is some progress on the North Korean nuclear issue. IAEA inspectors have verified that the North has shut down its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon. But that's only one part – although an important one – of North Korea's expected full declaration of its nuclear activities. Diplomats are now hammering out the next steps at a meeting in Shenyang, China. (The Financial Times: “Next step for N Korea nuclear disclosure”)
The American neocons can still sabotage the whole ongoing process by chasing the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) chimera. U.S. officials claim that in 2002, the DPRK's vice foreign minister Kang Sok-ju admitted that the country was making HEU. The DPRK government later retracted this statement, either because the U.S. were lying and it was never made, because Kang bluffed and shouldn't have, or because what he said was true but should have been kept secret.
It is difficult to know the truth. But let's assume for a minute that one of the first two possibilities is true, that the DPRK really does not has a HEU program, just like Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction (WMD). You can prove that you have something by showing it, but you can never convincingly prove that you don't have something. Maybe you do, but you have hidden it very well. The North Koreans could prove that they were busy with plutonium enrichment – because they were and that's why they could dismantle it. But HEU? If it was bluff, they cannot prove the program doesn't exist.
It's not excluded that the neocons will grab this ghost to claim that North Korea did not fully disclose its nuclear program – playing the same trick they played on Saddam as a pretext to invade Iraq.
The North Koreans may not be the world's most open jolly good fellows, but put before the hard choice of believing the North Koreans or the American neocons – in the absence of hard proof – I'd believe the former.
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