People's Democracy

DPRK Criticises US Decision To Stop Heavy Oil Supply

ON November 14, the US announced a decision to stop supplying heavy oil to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) from December. The US has been supplying heavy oil to the country under the DPRK-US Agreed Framework of 1994.

 In response, a statement from the DPRK foreign ministry said the US decision was a wanton violation of article 1 of the framework. The latter stipulated that the US would make for the loss of energy the DPRK would suffer by freezing its graphite moderated reactors and related facilities, till the completion of the first light water reactor. Under the agreement, the US was to build two light water reactors for the DPRK and supply it 5,00,000 tons of heavy oil a year for production of heat and electricity.

The light water reactors were scheduled to be completed by 2003, but the foundation for the first reactor was laid only in August this year.

The above-mentioned article 1 is one of the four articles of the framework. (See People’s Democracy, November 3 for the clauses of the agreement.)

To play down its violation of an international commitment, the US said the decision was the “collective will” of KEDO member nations. However, it is clear that in reality the US made the decision to stop supplying heavy oil to the DPRK and then forced it upon the Korean Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) which is not a signatory to the framework.

The KEDO, that comprises the US, the European Union (EU), Japan and South Korea, is an international consortium administering the 1994 nuclear agreement with the DPRK. Under US pressure, the KEDO has also announced a decision to suspend fuel oil shipments to the DPRK from December. Analysts say the suspension of heavy oil will bring great energy problems to the DPRK, as it meets about 30 per cent of the total energy demand in this East Asian country.

Though the US claimed that the DPRK violated the framework first, the DPRK statement said the US has unilaterally given up its commitment. 

It will be noted that the US drastically delayed the construction of the light water reactors it had promised to build, worked out a plan for a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the DPRK and listed the latter as part of an “axis of evil.” The US has also been threatening the DPRK by incessantly staging large-scale nuclear war exercises of various types against the DPRK, in South Korea and its vicinity. These exercises are a variant of the “Team Spirit” war exercises, held every year earlier. All these betray the hard-line US policy to stifle the DPRK.

The DPRK statement said the US cries for disarming the DPRK are, in essence, little short of calling upon the DPRK to abandon its system. This was more evident from the US president’s statement on November 15.

The statement also said the US gravely insulted the spirit of the UN charter by listing a UN member nation as part of an “axis of evil.” It also violated the basic spirit of nuclear non-proliferation by singling out nuclear-free states as the targets of pre-emptive US nuclear attacks.

Blaming the US for collapse of the 1994 pact, the DPRK statement said the country has exercised forbearance to the full. With a view to saving the Geneva agreement from being derailed, and as a way of settling the nuclear issue, the DPRK proposed for concluding a US-DPRK non-aggression treaty on October 25. The proposal was in essence the only realistic solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, as it aimed to settle the issues caused by the US threat by way of removing it.

On occasions, the US president and other authorities said they have no intention to invade the DPRK. But instead of giving the DPRK a legal assurance of non-aggression, the US response was to stop supplying heavy oil to the DPRK.

The DPRK statement said the US assertion about the DPRK violating the agreement amounts to superpower brigandry that a big country may threaten a small country as it wishes but a small country must not try to cope with any such threat. But, the statement added, the US is seriously mistaken if it thinks this logic will work on the Korean peninsula.