Counterterrorism Blog

President Bush’s announcement of plans to remove North Korea from the terrorism list is the result of long negotiations that illustrate that the process is complicated and it is turning controversial.

Talks with North Korea about removal from the terrorism list have been going on for at least eight years. North Korean officials have been seeking removal as part of the price for being more forthcoming in the nuclear disarmament negotiations over dismantling that nation’s nuclear weapons program.

Today the North Koreans provided TV images to bolster their effort by allowing U.S. television networks to cover the demolition of the cooling tower at the nuclear power plant at Yongbyon, where weapons-grade plutonium was processed.

President Bush’s announcement Thursday came after North Korea turned over, via China, a key 60 page document detailing its rogue nuclear program. Bush said the receipt of the nuclear disclosure marked the start of an "action for action" process that is meant to end with the full dismantling of the country's nuclear facilities and weapons.

The Washington Post described the handing over of the document as “one of the most substantial developments to date in the often fitful six-party talks among North Korea, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. It detailed aspects of North Korea's plutonium production and other parts of its nuclear program. “
The removal of a country from the terrorism list cannot take effect until after the legislatively-mandated 45-day advance notification to Congress.

There are still gaps in the information the U.S. is seeking, including a list of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and some Republicans quickly came out against the proposal to take North Korea off the terrorism list. Opponents include the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and John Bolton, the former Bush Administration ambassador to the United Nations. The New York Times reported today that there were divisions within the administration over the terrorism list decision, reflecting a victory by the State Department over the Defense Department and perhaps even Vice President Chaney.

Presidential candidates Senators Obama and McCain reacted cautiously supporting Congressional scrutiny. Sen. Obama said” before weighing in on North Korea's removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Congress must take the next 45 days to examine the adequacy of the North Korean declaration and verification procedures… "Sanctions are a critical part of our leverage to pressure North Korea to act." Sen. McCain said “We'll have to have a look and see how the overall agreement is and whether we should continue to lift sanctions, whether the Japanese and South Korean concerns have been addressed.”

Under a law passed almost twenty years ago, the President’s notification to Congress that North Korea has met the criteria for removal from the terrorism list cannot take effect for 45 days. The intent of the legislation was to give Congress time to react, holding hearings if it wished, and even try to block a rescission if it felt strongly enough and had the votes to do so. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism and Nonproliferation, said yesterday that he would introduce a resolution to keep North Korea on the terrorism list until it provided additional information.

North Korea, which is in terribly economic condition is keen to get off the terrorism list because formal designation by the Secretary of State as a state sponsor of international terrorism for “repeatedly supporting acts of international terrorism,” triggers a variety of economic sanctions. They include bans of foreign assistance, U.S. opposition to loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions, and denial of tax credits for American individuals and companies earning income in terrorism list countries. The export control sanctions requires 30-day advance notification to Congress (and possible opposition in Congress) of export licenses for dual use goods and services that could be used for military as well as civilian purposes.

These sanctions date back to the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the provisions (Sec. 6 (j) Congress inserted after learning belatedly fact that Commerce and State Department officials issued export licenses to ship 200 tank transporter trucks to Libya and sell six C-130 cargo planes for Syria despite those two country’s threats to their neighbors. The provision by the late Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick (R-NJ), who I was working for at the time, was intended as an export control measure to require high level scrutiny and advance notification to Congress before export licenses could be issued for goods or services that could enhance the military capability or terrorist supporting ability of countries that the Secretary of State formally designated as state sponsors of international terrorism. The designations quickly became known as the terrorism list.

Then a decade later, Congress enacted related legislation requiring that it be notified 45 days in advance before a rescission of a terrorist list designation could take effect. Its purpose was to allow time for the lawmakers to try to block the proposed move if they disagreed. These procedures were laid out under the Anti-Terrorism and Arms Export Amendments Act of 1989 (ATAEAA, Public Law 101-222). The law was a Congressional reaction to the Reagan Administration’s removal of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from the terrorism list in 1982 without informing Congress, even informally, in advance.

To review the procedures:

Under the ATAEAA law, a compromise worked out with the State Department, the President may propose to remove a country from the terrorism list under one of two procedures: Under the first, he must submit a report to selected legislators that states:

(i) there has been a fundamental change in the leadership and policies of the government concerned;
(ii) that the government is not supporting acts of international terrorism, and
(iii) the government has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.

This procedure was adopted at the State Department’s request in case there was a situation in which the designated country’s leadership and policies suddenly changed and the U.S. wanted to quickly provide economic or other assistance.

Alternately, the President may lift a terrorist list designation by sending a report to the Congressional leadership 45 days before the proposed rescission would take effect that states:

(i) the government concerned has not provided support for
international terrorism during the preceding 6-month period;

(ii) and the country has provided assurances that it will not support
acts of international terrorism in the future.

This second procedure is being used in North Korea’s case.

This legislation was initiated by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), who became chairman of the House International Relations Committee earlier this year. The six-month “clean hands” time period was negotiated in discussions with Richard Murphy, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. In actual practice, the State Department Counterterrorism Office, where I was working then, looked at a country’s record over a much longer period, at least two years, in assessing whether it was supporting terrorism. The 45-day advance notification procedure was adopted to provide Congress with time to respond to a notification without specifying a one house veto procedure that had been previously challenged in the courts over Congressional efforts to block arms sales.

In October 1991, Congress added a new provision to the State Department Authorization Act Pub. L. No. 102-138, § 321) allowing it to block a rescission by passing a joint resolution of disapproval, within the 45-day notification procedure specified under the 1989 ATAEAA legislation.

Iraq was removed after the new post-Saddam Hussein government took office. Libya was removed following lengthy negotiations, including compensation for the families of the victims of Pan Am 103, even though there was opposition from some family members. The current terrorist list countries, in addition to North Korea, are Iran, Syria, the Sudan and Cuba.

Mr. Berman issued a statement saying that "The Administration has wisely chosen to assess Pyongyang's sincerity in moving forward with the verification process during the Congressionally-mandated 45-day waiting period before North Korea can be removed officially from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List. You can be sure Congress will also closely monitor North Korea's actions. For now, the ball is squarely in Pyongyang's court."

An aide to Chairman Berman said Friday, before Congress started a week-long July 4 holiday recess, that no immediate hearings were planned.

Reacting against the White House announcement, the senior Republican on his Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FLA) said “The Administration's call for North Korea to be removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list is cause for profound concern. Serious verification questions linger, and I would have hoped that the Administration would have shown more caution, and less haste, on a matter of this gravity.

She added that ”Even while negotiating the agreement announced today, Pyongyang continued to brazenly assist another state sponsor of terrorism, Syria, in the development of an illicit nuclear program until an Israeli air strike destroyed the facility in the Syrian desert last September.”

The Florida Congresswoman added that “While the regime in Pyongyang has declared its intention to disable its nuclear reactor, questions remain as to whether the North Koreans will be fulfilling their full denuclearization obligations. By the Administration's own admission, as articulated by Secretary Rice in an editorial published today: 'It may be the case that North Korea does not want to give up its nuclear weapons and programs. That is a real possibility.'

She was referring to an opinion article by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal that also said “North Korea will state how much plutonium it possesses. We will not accept that statement on faith. We insist on verification.

Rep. Brad Sherman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism and nonproliferation said in a separate statement that North Korea’s declaration was incomplete because it lacked full accounting for North Korea’s Uranium enrichment, its existing nuclear weapons and its nuclear proliferati0n activities. He said he would introduce a resolution to keep North Korea on the state sponsors of terrorism list until it produced those missing elements.

The California Democrat said "The Bush Administration promised that North Korea would be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in return for a full verifiable declaration about its nuclear program. However, the declaration provided by North Korea has three glaring omissions. While it discusses North Korea's plutonium program, it fails to include a full accounting of North Korea's efforts to enrich uranium or acquire the ability to do so. It fails to provide a full accounting of existing nuclear weapons. And the declaration fails to provide a full accounting of North Korea's nuclear proliferation to other countries - particularly Syria.

"Given these shortcomings, and especially with Saturday's revelations in the Washington Post regarding uranium, we should not be moving forward at this time. "

He added that " It is inappropriate to run the 45 day clock on the decision to take North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism while the Bush Administration tries to work out the inadequacies of the North Korean declaration. North Korea should provide a complete declaration before the Bush Administration comes to Congress with the notice kicking off the 45 day clock.

"Accordingly, I will be introducing a resolution that will prevent the North Korean regime from coming off the states sponsors of terrorism list until the President certifies to Congress that in fact he has received the declaration that was promised - a declaration that includes these three key items (1. full accounting of uranium enrichment, 2. full accounting of existing nuclear weapons, and 3. full accounting of nuclear proliferation). Without them this declaration is of dubious value. "

If Congress does hold hearings, members would also be likely to be concerned about whether North Korea could provide iron-clad guarantees that it would not share any nuclear expertise or materials to terrorists intent on fashioning a “dirty bomb.”
The issue was raised in a February 5, 2008 Washington Times report citing a recently released government report to Congress that said the North Koreans had raised such a threat during 2005 discussions with an American academic.

Questions still remain about North Korea’s involvement in the Syrian nuclear facility that Israel destroyed last September.

While the nuclear issues are the focus of the Congressional concerns, there are still some lingering old terrorism issues although North Korea has not been involve in terrorist attacks in recent years. Secretary of State George Shultz placed North Korea on the terrorism after the bombing of Korean Airlines Flight 858 in 19877 by North Korean agents. North Korean operatives were also behind a 1983 attempt to kill South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan, who was scheduled to visit a memorial in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar. The timed bombs went off before his arrival, killing 17 South Korean dignitaries instead.

Japan has argued that North Korea should remain on the terrorism list until it discloses the fate of Japanese citizens that North Korea abducted during the 1970’s and 1980’s. The Washington Post said “the fate of eight still=-missing Japanese whom North Korea has acknowledged kidnapping has become an obsession in Japan.

North Korea also had supported terrorist groups operating in the Middle East and Sri Lanka. For example a January, 2008 Congressional Research Service Brief, page 17, describes press reports that North Korea has provided arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Both groups are designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S.

The reports fit a historic pattern. North Korea provided training and other assistance to a variety of terrorist groups in the 1960’s and 70’s including the Palestine Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine when it conducted major aircraft hijackings and other attacks and to the Japanese Red Army. These two groups staged a joint attack in 1972 that killed 24 persons including 16 American citizens from Puerto Rico when their plane landed in Israeli for a Christian pilgrimage.

As I said in a February 19 blog item focusing on whether Cuba might eventually be removed from the terrorist list as a result of Fidel Castro’s departure from office, any Cuban or North Korean officials who may think that getting off the terrorism list is a simple matter should think again.