MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th August, 2020) A confidential UN report on the status of North Korea's nuclear program that was leaked to the media has revealed no new information and is unlikely to have a significant impact on the international community's policy towards Pyongyang, experts told Sputnik.
The findings came from an interim report that was submitted to the United Nations Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee on Monday and seen by the Reuters news agency one day later. UN officials said that North Korea was continuing its nuclear program and has "probably" developed miniaturized nuclear devices that can be attached to ballistic missiles.
Following the publication of extracts from the report in the media, Russia's first deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, called on the organization to urgently address the source of the leak, adding that the sharing of confidential information could have dire consequences.
Calls for global nuclear disarmament have grown this week, as the international community commemorated the 75th anniversary of the US atomic bomb attack on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
However, tensions remain high on the Korean Peninsula and talks between Washington and Pyongyang on the topic of nuclear disarmament have shown no sign of resuming. It remains to be seen if the new UN findings will have any impact on these matters.
NEW REPORT REVEALS OLD INFORMATION
The UN Security Council report, which was prepared by a panel of experts monitoring the organization's sanctions imposed on North Korea, merely confirmed what many countries have already assumed, Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation, told Sputnik.
"I do not think this changes much. The UN report simply confirmed what many have assumed for quite some time - the majority of nongovernmental experts and, I am sure, intelligence services believed that North Korea had created a warhead for missiles. Consequently, relevant analysis have factored in that fact for a few years," Sokov commented.
These sentiments were shared by Matthew Bunn, professor of the practice of energy, national security, and foreign policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy school of Government, who underlined that the report did not give a definitive answer on whether Pyongyang had developed miniaturized nuclear devices.
"There is no new information here on the miniaturization of North Korea's nuclear weapons; the report merely says that some countries think North Korea has 'probably' succeeded in miniaturizing its weapons for missile delivery," Bunn told Sputnik.
Marc Finaud, the head of arms proliferation at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, also made reference to the wording used by the UN experts, although added that the findings of the report were likely accurate.
"So, in this case, the report is likely to be accurate but, according to media reports, it remains careful, assessing that North Korea has 'probably' developed miniaturized warheads to be fitted on ballistic missiles," Finaud told Sputnik
As reported by Reuters, the UN experts said that North Korea's last six nuclear tests have given Pyongyang the opportunity to develop miniaturized nuclear warheads. According to Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, this information is not surprising.
"There is really nothing new here, if by 'miniaturized' we mean 'small and light enough to go on a missile.' Six tests are plenty to achieve that milestone. Kim Jong Un has more than once given public instructions to continue expanding North Korea's nuclear arsenal." Pollack told Sputnik.
It is unsurprising that North Korea would look to continue developing its nuclear program, Gotz Neuneck, a professor at Hamburg's Institute of Peace Research and Security, told Sputnik, although the academic raised issue with the authors of the report, saying that this type of research should be carried out by nuclear experts, not sanctions specialists.
"It is not surprising that the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] continues the development of its nuclear warheads to make them smaller, fitting to a delivery system. This panel of independent experts is monitoring sanctions and is dependent on the input of the intelligence data from member states. This is not a panel of technical experts. So the conclusion about 'miniaturized' warheads is justified but depends on the definition of miniaturization. The panel should be more specific about the weapon-grade material in each of these bombs, its size, and yield," Neuneck remarked.
If the UN Security Council report revealed little that the international community did not already know, it seems unlikely that North Korea can expect to face additional sanctions, the Harvard academic Bunn said.
"Since the reported information is not new, I doubt that aspect of the report will have any impact on the politics of UN actions on North Korea," the professor said, adding that the Security Council must cooperate in order to mount a substantive response to Pyongyang.
Looking ahead, the international community should assume that the findings of the UN report reflect the situation on the ground, and plan policy accordingly, the academic added.
"It is certainly possible that North Korea, with the nuclear tests it has conducted, is now able to put nuclear weapons on its ballistic missiles, including its long-range ones. We should probably assume for the purposes of planning that they can," Bunn commented.
The United Nations has imposed sanctions on North Korea since 2006, although these punitive measures have done little to curtail Pyongyang's resolve to develop its nuclear program. The country's leader Kim Jong Un in late July praised the ability of nuclear weapons to act as a deterrent, as reported by state-run media.
"North Korean nuclear doctrine has always seen a role for nuclear weapons in war-fighting as well as deterrence (that is tactical as well as strategic uses)," Stephan Haggard, a University of California San Diego professor of Korean-Pacific Studies, told Sputnik.
The latest findings may prompt the United States to strengthen its unilateral sanctions against North Korea, although Washington will likely wait for its own intelligence reports, rather than relying on information provided by the United Nations, the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation scholar Sokov said.
"I do not anticipate a significant change in policy by all major players, although the US may use it as a pretext for new sanctions (even this does not appear to me likely - usually, it takes reports by US intelligence services for that)," the academic said.
While the leak of a confidential document into the public sphere may put pressure on the United States to act, Miles Pomper,�a senior fellow at the Washington DC office of the Middlebury Institute's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said that Washington already knew of Pyongyang's development of miniature warheads three years ago.
"I believe this information is well grounded. It is consistent with the assessments of both the US intelligence community and independent experts. Both reached this conclusion three years ago after North Korea's most recent and most powerful nuclear test," Pomper told Sputnik.
The leaked report also shows that there is a consensus within the UN Security Council that North Korea's nuclear program could pose a threat, which may lead to a change in policy within the international organization, the academic added.
"While the UN report doesn't alter the reality of the North Korean program, it does indicate that there is a consensus among experts from key countries, including the permanent members of the Security Council, such as Russia and China, as to the North Korean threat," Pomper remarked.
Washington and Pyongyang seemed to be making progress on nuclear disarmament talks at a pair of summits held in Singapore and Vietnam in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The United States has called for North Korea to disarm in order to receive sanctions relief, although Pyongyang has called on Washington to make the first move as an act of goodwill.
Leading officials from both sides met in Sweden this past October, although the North Korean representatives walked out of the talks, claiming that their US counterparts had come empty-handed and unwilling to negotiate.
According to the Geneva Center for Security Policy's Finaud, Washington's negotiating tactics with officials from Pyongyang have yet to yield any success.
"The approach followed by the Trump administration, with its three summit meetings that were not followed by real negotiations, failed to yield any progress towards the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Indeed, the United States continued to demand unilateral disarmament measures on the part of North Korea without reciprocating with a peace treaty, security assurances, and sanctions relief," Finaud remarked.
North Korea is in no rush to return to nuclear disarmament talks, according to the country's first vice-minister of foreign affairs, Choe Son Hui. In a statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency at the start of July, Choe said that Washington has no intention of bringing a new impetus to the disarmament talks and added that Pyongyang has little interest in starting negotiations at the present time.
Several days after the first vice-minister's comments, the defense ministers of the United States, Japan, and Australia issued a joint statement urging the North Korean leadership to resume negotiations on nuclear disarmament.
However, it seems unlikely that the international community will reach an agreement with North Korea, should they return to the negotiating table unwilling to make any concessions to Pyongyang.�
