Flawed Agreed Framework Allowed North Korea to Develop Nukes, Former IAEA Official Says

The real Clinton legacy.........

The 1994 Agreed Framework between North Korea and the United States contained two profound flaws that enabled Pyongyang to continue developing a nuclear arsenal and led to the current nuclear crisis, former International Atomic Energy Agency Deputy Director General Pierre Goldschmidt said this week.

The agreement “sowed the seeds of the present potentially dangerous stalemate” by allowing North Korea to restrict agency inspections, Goldschmidt wrote in a policy brief published Tuesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Under the terms of the deal, the United States pledged to build light-water reactors for Pyongyang and to supply fuel oil in exchange for Pyongyang’s commitment to freeze its nuclear activities, including plutonium production.

“The second flaw of the Agreed Framework was that it allowed North Korea to retain in storage all of its spent fuel containing weapons-grade plutonium and to maintain a reprocessing facility in a state of readiness so that North Korea could restart operation at any time,” according to Goldschmidt.