NORTH KOREA'S BLUFF AND BLUSTER

Interesting, if it turns out to be true:

WASHINGTON -- A year after North Korea provoked a crisis with the United States by admitting a secret effort to make weapons-grade uranium, U.S. officials say the program appears to be far less advanced than diplomats had feared.

Intensive international monitoring and North Korean ineptitude have significantly slowed efforts to build a plant to produce highly enriched uranium, says a State Department official involved in U.S. attempts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Monitoring has likely had little to no effect--Kim Jong-Il doesn't care if we monitor; in fact, he probably wants his nuke program monitored to the extent that it may worry us as long as his scientists appear to be moving fuel rods around and so forth. But monitoring and ineptitude probably aren't sufficient explanations for the apparent lack of progress. North Korea suffered a brain drain last year, in a US-led enticement program dubbed Operation Weasel (no known connection to the Axis of Weasel):

A SWATH of North Korea's military and scientific elite, among them key nuclear specialists, has defected to the US and its allies through a highly secret smuggling operation involving the tiny Pacific island of Nauru.

The defections have taken place since last October and have been made possible through the help of 11 countries that agreed to provide consular protection to smuggle the targets from neighbouring China, according to sources close to the operation, which has now been wound up.

Some countries also agreed to act as transit points for up to 30 days once the defectors left China, the sources claim.

Among those now believed to be in a safe house in the West is the father of North Korea's nuclear program, Kyong Won-ha, who left his homeland late last year with the help of Spanish officials. Debriefings of Mr Kyong are said to have given intelligence officials an unprecedented insight into North Korea's nuclear capabilities, particularly at the feared reactor number one in the southern city of Yongbyon.

Imagine if we lost Edward Teller during the Manhattan Project--that's what may have happened to Kim's Yongbyon project. Those 11 countries mentioned are probably members of the Proliferation Security Initiative. Neither Weasel nor the PSI have attracted much press attention, but their benefits seem clear enough: North Korean smuggling operations are bollixed up, and we seem to have been able to stymie Kim's nuclear plans by stealing his top scientists. On the issue of smuggling:

Last April, Germany blocked North Korea's purchase of 200 tons of aluminum tubing suitable for vacuum casings for centrifuges. Twenty-two tons made it on board a French ship in Hamburg but was seized in the Suez Canal.

''Our attempts to heighten awareness have had an impact,'' the State Department official says.

Indeed. Let's hope progress continues. It does seem clear that by smoking out the NoKo's secret nuclear program and then convincing the allies and China that the threat is all too real, the Bush adminstration has made some real progress. We're by no means out of the nuclear woods, but at least we're no longer pretending that Kim gave up his weapons for a few trinkets.

Additionally, it's not hard to imagine what kind of impact the Saddam example has had on Kim Jong-Il's state of mind.