A draft agreement between North Korea and the United States is being widely praised this week as solving worries about Korean nuclear weapons "once and for all." Yet the pact seems dangerously weak in some areas and clearly shows the need for continuing negotiations.
Both Washington and North Korea insist the deal will lead to the end of any nuclear threat on the Korean peninsula, foster better relations between North and South Korea, and end years of hostility with America.But South Korea, which has the most to fear from North Korea, warns that the proposed agreement falls short of expectations.
For example, the key point, the inspection of suspected North Korean nuclear weapons sites, lacks tough deadlines.
North Korea withdrew from the international nuclear nonproliferation treaty about two years ago, amid concerns that the Pyongyang government was secretly building nuclear warheads. North Korea refused to let inspectors examine two nuclear waste sites that might be the source of nuclear weapons.
Under the deal with Washington this week, North Korea is to open the disputed sites to inspections. But the accord gives Pyongyang up to five years before any inspections have to take place.
That's enough time to build some nuclear warheads and remove all the evidence of waste having been diverted to weapons. Such a loophole amounts to not much more than the United States agreeing to look the other way for five years.
Other aspects of the agreement call for the United States and others, principally Japan, to help North Korea replace its current nuclear reactors with modern light-water reactors for electric power. The project will cost $4 billion and take 10 years.
One of the byproducts of the old reactors is plutonium, which can be converted for use in N-warheads. Waste plutonium would not be produced in more modern light-water reactors.
However, Washington also appears to have taken a relaxed approach to storage of the existing plutonium by letting Pyongyang keep 8,000 spent fuel rods inside North Korea instead of moving them to a third country. Reprocessing the rods could produce enough plutonium for five nuclear bombs.
The pact also calls for the establishing of low-level diplomatic ties between Pyongyang and Washington and the gradual easing of restrictions on trade and investment.
All told, the agreement does not deal forthrightly with the worst worries about North Korea's nuclear program but merely delays the day of reckoning.
That approach would be more acceptable if inspections and control of nuclear waste were dealt with rigorously - but they are not.