• weapons of mass destruction. It was also producing ballistic missiles that
could deliver such weapons and was selling them to threatening, irrespon-
sible states such as Syria and Libya.
At no point did the North Koreans attempt to answer any of these ques-
tions or to clarify either their nuclear policies or their intentions. They were
clearly shocked by the satellite picture but recovered quickly, describing it
as an American “doctored” photograph that merely attempted to force
North Korea to sign the IAEA safeguards agreement. When they were in-
formed that it was not an American but a French satellite photo, the North
Koreans had no response.
One of their team argued that the concept of nuclear inspections was
scientifically and technically unsound. It was unfair, he said, for the United
States to insist that North Korea allow its facilities to be inspected. The United
States opposed only the acquisition of nuclear weapons by other, nonnuclear
states, while they were free to have tens of thousands of weapons them-
selves. In this way the United States opposed only horizontal but not verti-
cal proliferation.
Van Cleave again cautioned the North Koreans that the United States, and
much of the rest of the world, took the issue of nonproliferation of nuclear
weapons very seriously indeed. No other issue was more important between
North Korea and the United States and its allies. He denied that the United
States opposed only horizontal and not vertical proliferation. As an example,
the United States had been engaged for two decades in negotiations to stop
the vertical proliferation of nuclear weapons, Van Cleave said, noting the
strategic-arms treaty with the Soviet Union that would reduce strategic
offensive weapons and the agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces
in Europe. In addition to these agreements, Van Cleave pointed out that, in
the years since the NPT was signed, the United States had unilaterally re-
moved some eight thousand nuclear weapons from its own arsenal and re-
moved over two thousand such weapons from Western Europe, before any
arms-control agreements on those forces were in existence.
North Korea, Van Cleave charged, apparently was trying to avoid its ob-
ligations under the NPT by artificially linking U.S. nuclear arms to the issue
as a condition for fulfilling those obligations. The NPT had no bearing on
U.S. nuclear weapons policies except for the obligation not to transfer nuclear
weapons or technology to nonnuclear states. If, of course, North Korea were
to insist on continuing what appeared to be a nuclear weapons program and
refused safeguard inspections, or if it sold nuclear materials, then U.S.
nuclear policy would have to take such behavior into account.