IAEA starts ROK probe
 Updated: 2004-09-17 08:39

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is sending a second inspection team to the Republic of Korea (ROK) this weekend to delve into its suspicions about the nation's past nuclear experiments.

The dispatch of another team in less than three weeks is evidence of how seriously the UN agency regards the recently disclosed plutonium extraction and uranium enrichment, no matter how small their amounts may have been. On Monday, Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA director general, termed the failure to report them immediately as a "matter of serious concern."

But the second round of inspections should not be a cause of too much concern to the ROK Government if the nuclear scientists involved conducted the experiments out of curiosity, as it claims. Instead, this should serve as an occasion for the government to clear any doubts the UN agency may harbour about them.

It is of no use for the government to brush aside the IAEA director general's remark as mere rhetoric or to complain that it is unduly being bashed by the international news media when it has nothing to hide about extracting a negligible amount of plutonium in 1982 and producing a tiny amount of enriched uranium in 2000. It is also useless to appeal to the UN agency that it had no ill-conceived intentions about the experiments.

What the government needs to do is to convince the inspectors with facts that it was not behind the experiments. It may do so by making all existing records about them available to the inspectors, give them uninhibited access to all the nuclear facilities they wish to check and arrange meetings with any nuclear scientist they wish to interview.

The government is urged to take great care not to bungle this time, as it did when it reported the uranium enrichment in June this year as required under the additional protocol to the nuclear safeguard agreement. It could have avoided the brouhaha if it had unveiled at the time all the facts about the experiments, not only to the IAEA but also to the news media.

Excerpts from The Korea Herald

(China Daily)

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