The two faces of Rumsfeld

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

Randeep Ramesh
Friday May 9, 2003
The Guardian

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 ([UKP]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 Korean 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 programme 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.

                             -==-

Source: Guardian UK ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,952289,00.html


Cheers, Steve..

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