The
Two Faces Of Rumsfeld
By Randeep Ramesh
The
Guardian
09 May, 2003
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
of positively engaging 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
defence 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 was 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.