Nuclear Pandora146;s box

North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty NPT with immediate effect, claiming 8216;freedom from the binding for...

North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty NPT with immediate effect, claiming 8216;freedom from the binding force of the safeguards accord with the International Atomic Energy Agency8217;.

The treaty caters for a 90-day notice of withdrawal by a member state. North Korea had given such a notice in March 1993, but had 8216;suspended8217; the withdrawal notice a day before the deadline. This was the period when the agreement to provide nuclear reactors for power generation and food and oil supplies were promised in return of the suspension. Technically, Pyonyang may be right and therefore its acquisition of nuclear weapons now would not violate any international obligations. But here is still a ray of hope. Its officials have affirmed that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes and the country would be willing to reverse its decision if supply of oil and food is recommenced.

Obviously the issue goes far beyond North Korea. The provision of withdrawal in the NPT always represented the Achilles8217; heel of the non-proliferation regime so assiduously built up over the decades. Withdrawal from the NPT by North Korea and the acquisition of nuclear weapons may well lead to the unwinding of the nuclear order with unpredictable consequences.

India, which has had serious reservations about the NPT, has always cautioned the international community of the goal of pursuing non-proliferation without corresponding progress on global nuclear disarmament. India itself was unlikely to have gone nuclear if nuclear disarmament had been accorded even some priority after the Cold War ended.

But the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 sought to freeze the global nuclear order in spite of even eminent Japanese leaders cautioning about the risks of such a step. It has been clear since 1998 that a new nuclear weapon state could now emerge only either through the clandestine route, or after a legally valid notice of withdrawal from the NPT.

The challenge ahead for the world now is a twin one: dealing with North Korea and, secondly, ensuring a viable, durable non-proliferation regime. Both are deeply intertwined. Given the rate at which the situation has been escalating over the past few months, Washington would do well to give diplomacy a higher priority than it has done so far.

North Korea represents a far greater strategic and foreign policy challenge to Washington than even the war against Iraq. Stopping supplies of oil and food during the peak winter season is perhaps not the best way to invite co-operation from North Korea.

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Concurrently, there is an urgent need to pay serious attention to building a global regime that revives the principle of a balance of obligations between those who possess nuclear weapons and those who don8217;t, a principle unanimously approved by the UN General Assembly in November 1965, and to which the NPT commits all member states.