WASHINGTON — North Korea handed detailed nuclear weapons records to the United States on Thursday, an important peek into the isolated regime’s bombmaking past but not enough to answer criticism that the Bush administration is grasping for a disarmament deal at any cost.
The technical logs from North Korea’s shuttered plutonium reactor would give outside experts a yardstick to measure whether the North is telling the truth about a bomb program that the poor nation has agreed to trade away for economic and political rewards.
“Our top three priorities are going to be verification, verification, verification,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
Privately, State Department officials hope the approximately 18,000 papers will build confidence among conservative critics of the recent, relatively flexible U.S. posture toward North Korea.
The Bush administration’s 2007 disarmament deal with the North requires some congressional approval, and GOP unease is growing.
The North is five months past a deadline to produce a complete record of its weapons programs or an alleged side business selling nuclear know-how to other countries, and U.S. officials announced no new deadline.
The North claims it met its obligations, but it has also agreed to a new tentative deal to break the impasse.
That deal would have the North acknowledge U.S. concerns about an illicit uranium program and alleged sale or transfer of nuclear know-how to other nations but would not require the North to spell everything out.
