India, North Korea nuclear nexus exposed

An unholy connection between India and North Korea has come to the fore at the recently held 17th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Venezuela where India used its influence to get slashed a paragraph in condemnation to the nuclear test by North Korea.

The Indian support for North Korean nuclear tests has proved an evil nexus between the two states. But this was not the only objective India gained at the summit by using its muscle at the NAM. It also used influence to bash Pakistan at NAM.

The report has raised serious questions for Indian bid to get included in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). While India has been manoeuvring the world opinion for NGS membership, the report is being seen as a major dent for the Indian efforts.

“The way the NAM works is on consensus so we have to have consensus among all countries but that said we have been able to get references to terrorism (put in the declaration) which are purely and largely language suggested by India,” Indian media outlet First Post quoted India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin as telling journalists at a briefing.

During the preparations for the final declaration of the summit, Columbia proposed a paragraph to condemn the nuclear test conducted by North Korea recently. All the member-states, except India, supported the idea and agreed to include the paragraph in the Disarmament and International Security section of the declaration.

However, being one of the five founding members of NAM, the Indian representative pressurised other members to get the proposed paragraph removed from the final document of the 21-point NAM declaration.

The paragraph to denounce the North Korean nuclear test was initially a part of the Disarmament and International Security section. However, Indian representative made sure to get the para removed from the final draft.

But this is not for the first time that Indian and North Korean connection has surfaced. In a report published by AlJazeera in June 2016, titled “India’s embarrassing North Korean connection”, an Indian journalist Nilanjana Bhowmick came up with expose of Indian secret training to North Korean scientists for development of ballistic missiles at a Research centre in the Himalayan foothills under scrutiny where North Korean scientists were trained.

The report claimed that at least 30 students had been sent to North Korea for training at the Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (CSSTEAP).

Two of them are currently studying there, one of whom is affiliated with the National Aerospace Development Administration, which, the report says, plays a key role in the North Korean nuclear development programme.

And North Korea kept sending scientists and space employees, even after the UN issued the first set of nuclear sanctions in 2006, prohibiting member countries from providing technical training to North Korea.

“The lapse was exposed only in March 2016 in an annual report to the UN Security Council.

The ‘repeated applications’ by North Korea,” the report said, adding that it indicates the courses were relevant to its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development programme.

The UN has issued five major sanctions against North Korea since 2006. However, some of the course modules at the centre training the North Koreans might have violated provisions of the sanctions.

For example, the report states, one of the courses offered instructions that “could be directly relevant” to “designing and testing a launch vehicle using ballistic missile technology, such as those on launch vehicles, attitude control, and telemetry, tracking, command and data-handling systems”.

Investigators also found a course on satellite communications, which is in violation of a resolution banning “any transfers” to or from North Korea, “technical training, advice, services or assistance related to nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related or other weapons of mass destruction- related programmes.

However, North Korean students who trained in the school have gone on to occupy important state positions in Pyongyang.

After finishing his course in India, Hong, the official at the North Korean embassy in Delhi, went on to head a research group on remote sensing technology at the State Commission for Science and Technology, where he worked until his assignment in India.

Paek Chang-ho, who had been on the satellite communications course at the institute in 1999-2000, before the sanctions were issued, became the head of an agency involved with North Korea’s first satellite launch in 2012.

The 52-year-old Paek, who ended up on the UN’s sanctions list for his role in the 2012 launch, is now a senior official at a scientific research agency.

“The training may very well have helped North Korea’s military programmes,” Bruce Bechtol, president of the International Council on Korean Studies, said in an email.

But the Texas-based professor and Korea expert said that the result of the probe “does not necessarily make India complicit” with North Korea’s programme.

However, the UNSC response over the probe report was interesting. The Security Council report said it too believes that the slip-up was “inadvertent”.

India is due to present a detailed report to a UN advisory committee on the issue.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise how extraordinarily unwise, and indeed irresponsible, it is nowadays to train North Korean operatives in technologies that can be used to improve and perfect their ballistic missile programme,” Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank, said in an email to Al-Jazeera.

“The government of India needs to acknowledge the seriousness of this error, take accountability for it, and publicly commit that it will not be an enabler of North Korean WMD programmes thenceforth,” Nicholas maintained, the report concludes.