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Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on
the board of a company which three years ago sold
two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea -
a country he now regards as part of the "axis
of evil" and which has been targeted for
regime change by Washington because of its efforts
to build nuclear weapons. Mr Rumsfeld was a
non-executive director of ABB, a European
engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a
$200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and
key components for the reactors. The current
defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to
2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the
Bush administration.
The reactor deal was part of President Bill
Clinton's policy of persuading the North Korean
regime to positively engage with the west.
The sale of the nuclear technology was a
high-profile contract. ABB's then chief executive,
Goran Lindahl, visited North Korea in November
1999 to announce ABB's "wide-ranging,
long-term cooperation agreement" with the
communist government.
The company also opened an office in the
country's capital, Pyongyang, and the deal was
signed a year later in 2000. Despite this, Mr
Rumsfeld's office said that the de fence secretary
did not "recall it being brought before the
board at any time".
In a statement to the American magazine
Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said
that there "was no vote on this". A
spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that
"board members were informed about the
project which would deliver systems and equipment
for light water reactors".
Just months after Mr Rumsfeld took office,
President George Bush ended the policy of
engagement and negotiation pursued by Mr Clinton,
saying he did not trust North Korea, and pulled
the plug on diplomacy. Pyongyang warned that it
would respond by building nuclear missiles. A
review of American policy was announced and the
bilateral confidence building steps, key to Mr
Clinton's policy of detente, halted.
By January 2002, the Bush administration had
placed North Korea in the "axis of evil"
alongside Iraq and Iran. If there was any doubt
about how the White House felt about North Korea
this was dispelled by Mr Bush, who told the
Washington Post last year: "I loathe [North
Korea's leader] Kim Jong-il."
The success of campaigns in Afghanistan and
Iraq have enhanced the status of Mr Rumsfeld in
Washington. Two years after leaving ABB, Mr
Rumsfeld now considers North Korea a
"terrorist regime _ teetering on the verge of
collapse" and which is on the verge of
becoming a proliferator of nuclear weapons. During
a bout of diplomatic activity over Christmas he
warned that the US could fight two wars at once -
a reference to the forthcoming conflict with Iraq.
After Baghdad fell, Mr Rumsfeld said Pyongyang
should draw the "appropriate lesson".
Critics of the administration's bellicose
language on North Korea say that the problem was
not that Mr Rumsfeld supported the
Clinton-inspired diplomacy and the ABB deal but
that he did not "speak up against it".
"One could draw the conclusion that economic
and personal interests took precedent over
non-proliferation," said Steve LaMontagne, an
analyst with the Centre for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation in Washington.
Many members of the Bush administration are on
record as opposing Mr Clinton's plans, saying that
weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted
from the type of light water reactors that ABB
sold. Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and
the state department's number two diplomat,
Richard Armitage, both opposed the deal as did the
Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, whose
campaign Mr Rumsfeld ran and where he also acted
as defence adviser.
One unnamed ABB board director told Fortune
magazine that Mr Rumsfeld was involved in lobbying
his hawkish friends on behalf of ABB.
The Clinton package sought to defuse tensions
on the Ko rean peninsula by offering supplies of
oil and new light water nuclear reactors in return
for access by inspectors to Pyongyang's atomic
facilities and a dismantling of its heavy water
reactors which produce weapons grade plutonium.
Light water reactors are known as
"proliferation-resistant" but, in the
words of one expert, they are not
"proliferation-proof".
The type of reactors involved in the ABB deal
produce plutonium which needs refining before it
can be weaponised. One US congressman and critic
of the North Korean regime described the reactors
as "nuclear bomb factories".
North Korea expelled the inspectors last year
and withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty in January at about the same time that the
Bush administration authorised $3.5m to keep ABB's
reactor project going.
North Korea is thought to have offered to scrap
its nuclear facilities and missile pro gramme and
to allow international nuclear inspectors into the
country. But Pyongyang demanded that security
guarantees and aid from the US must come first.
Mr Bush now insists that he will only negotiate
a new deal with Pyongyang after the nuclear
programme is scrapped. Washington believes that
offering inducements would reward Pyongyang's
"blackmail" and encourage other
"rogue" states to develop weapons of
mass destruction.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2004
ORIGINAL
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2000:
director of a company which wins $200m
contract to sell nuclear reactors to North
Korea 2002: declares North Korea a terrorist
state, part of the axis of evil and a target
for regime change
