FoxNews EXCLUSIVE: Experts charge UN high-tech shipment to North Korea violates UN sanctions; State Department waffles

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/07/26/legal-proliferation-experts-charge-un-high-tech-shipment-to-north-korea/#ixzz21rPstrHe

The obscure branch of the United Nations that shipped sophisticated computers and other high-tech equipment to North Korea violated the U.N.’s own sanctions against that regime, according to a prominent international legal scholar, who echoed congressional investigators in calling for an “independent, external commission” to probe the incident.

John Yoo, a national security expert during the first Bush administration and now a  University of California, Berkeley, professor who specializes in international and U.S. constitutional law, says that the equipment shipped by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, “would allow North Korea to carry out simulations necessary to design highly sophisticated nuclear warheads…without the need for testing.” North Korea set off illegal nuclear blasts in 2006 and 2009, which led to the Security Council sanctions.

Yoo’s charge is at odds with the preliminary conclusion of the U.S. State Department on the same issue. A State Department spokesman said Wednesday that it “doesn’t appear” that WIPO’s actions -- which involved sending the equipment and paying for it via China, to avoid heightened U.N. oversight -- amounted to a violation.

Yoo’s opinion was echoed by other proliferation experts, including former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton and a former top-level expert at the State Department who now heads an important anti-proliferation center in Britain.

Any conclusion that WIPO’s actions did not violate repeated U.N. Security Council sanctions against the insular communist regime, Yoo said, “would assume that the agencies of the United Nations have a mandate to violate the very measures necessary to protect international peace and security -- as determined by the Security Council, the only arm of the United Nations empowered to take steps to prevent such threats.”

For its part, the State Department declared that its own judgment was a “preliminary assessment,” and that it would await a ruling by relevant U.N. sanctions committees looking into the issue. Those committees were not consulted by WIPO’s director general, Francis Gurry, before the controversial equipment was shipped to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

The very notion that even fully informed U.N. sanctions committees -- which were unsuccessful in halting the notorious Oil for Food scandal involving former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein -- will turn up much is questionable, according to Bolton, who previously headed the Bush administration’s successful effort, known as the Proliferation Security Initiative. (Bolton is also a Fox News contributor).

“Unfortunately, these committees have been where sanctions go to die,” Bolton told Fox News. “It is a complete abdication of responsibility, not to mention a signal of embarrassing weakness, for the United States to defer to the Security Council sanctions committees. The U.S. government should first decide its own position on sanctions violations, including the possibility of violations of U.S. sanctions, and then present that view in the sanctions committees.”

In an Op-Ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, Bolton also warned that, “By evading sanctions within the U.N. temple itself, these nuclear proliferators show how to defeat even broadly supported sanctions regimes through death by a thousand cuts.”

For his part, Yoo was emphatic that the WIPO shipments, which took place in late 2011 or early 2012, and were revealed by Fox News last April, were in violation of  even stiffer U.S. sanctions that ban all computer exports to North Korea due to its role as proliferators of nuclear weapons technology and ballistic missile know-how.

The State Department, however, is also shying away from that conclusion, as spokesman Victoria Nuland said yesterday. State, she declared, is “seeking more information from WIPO so that we can conclude  our own work on whether there was any violation of U.S. law, but we don’t yet have everything that we need in order to make that assessment.”

Whether the U.S. will ever pry all the facts out of  WIPO is questionable. After earlier declaring that it viewed the issue with “utmost seriousness,” and announcing that it would not make such shipments in the future, Gurry blocked the appearance of two senior WIPO staffers before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, leading to cancellation of a briefing session on the shipments.

State Department spokesperson Nuland sidestepped a question at the daily briefing yesterday as to whether the small U.N. agency was providing “enough cooperation.”

Nuland’s reply:  “Well, we are continuing to work with them and that is a conversation that is ongoing.” She cited a number of “positive steps” taken by the agency in the wake of the cash-for-computers revelations -- but only on future projects, not those that have already taken place. One of those steps is a “commission that will have an external and independent auditing ability’’ to vet projects -- but  only in the future.

The under-the-radar shipments of Hewlett-Packard computers and servers by WIPO shipments took place in late 2011 or early 2012, and were financed through the Beijing offices of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). They were revealed by Fox News last April. The U.S. was not informed of the shipments even though the goods were of U.S. manufacture.

Hewlett-Packard has declared that the shipments of laptops, printers and servers violated the company’s strict ban on exports of its high-tech equipment to such rogue regimes.

When the State Department began investigating the North Korea incident, it learned that WIPO and UNDP had also made a similar shipment of 20 less-sophisticated computers to Iran.
According to Yoo, the equipment transfer gives the regime of fledgling leader Kim Jong Un a significant boost in hardware and software “that could quite conceivably contribute” to North Korea’s nuclear-related programs

That alone, he argues, is enough to cross the threshold of the first U.N. sanctions resolution against North Korea (known in UN-speak as DPRK, for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), enacted in 2006. That resolution urges U.N. member states to prevent the “direct or indirect” supply of goods and technology “which could contribute to DPRK’s  nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related or other weapons of mass destruction-related programs.”

Yoo emphasizes the world “could,” which, he says, means that the U.N. sanctions resolutions were intended to “cover a broad, non-exhaustive list of items and circumstances.” He also noted that other Security Council resolutions explicitly called on “relevant United Nations bodies and other interested parties,” as well as nation-states, to cooperate “fully” in the sanctions efforts.

Yoo offered his legal opinion jointly with another Berkeley law professor, Laurent Mayali, at the behest of a WIPO whistle-blower who first brought the issue to public attention by alerting the U.S. mission in Geneva, among others, to the agency’s actions.

Click here to view the legal memorandum. 

Their contentions were backed up by a sanctions expert who is not involved in the whistle-blower imbroglio: Mark Fitzpatrick, head of the Non-proliferation and Disarmament program at Britain’s prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, and a former long-time top-level proliferation specialist at the U.S. State Department in the Bush and Clinton administrations.

“Dr. Yoo's argument is correct,” Fitzpatrick emailed in response to questions from Fox News based on the Berkeley professors’ arguments. “Regardless of whether or not the computers in question could allow North Korea to conduct simulations that would enable the development of smaller weapons, it seems unquestionable to me that the computers could aid the program.”

The fact that North Korea -- not to mention Iran -- is looking for ways and means to boost its nuclear capability also seems unquestionable. Immediately prior to the initial WIPO revelations, the Kim regime shocked the world -- and embarrassed the Obama administration -- by announcing that it was about to undertake a rocket-powered satellite launch that Washington considered a cover for work on missile-ready weapons programs.

The administration quickly canceled a freshly-minted deal to ship  some 264,000 tons of food aid to the poverty-stricken rogue country. The satellite launch subsequently did not take place.
For its part, Iran earlier this month launched a variety of ballistic missiles, including a longer-range version, as the U.S. and Europe ratcheted up sanctions intended to stop the Islamic Republic’s increasingly overt nuclear programs, which Iran claims are peaceful. So far, the regime does not seem deterred.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/07/26/legal-proliferation-experts-charge-un-high-tech-shipment-to-north-korea/#ixzz21rPstrHe

FoxNews: UN computer shipment to North Korean regime violates US manufacturer’s ban

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ON FOXNEWS

By George Russell

A United Nations agency that quietly shipped computers and computer servers to North Korea several months ago apparently was violating restrictions on the equipment’s use imposed by Hewlett-Packard, the U.S.-based maker of the computers and computer servers, which bars any HP equipment from being sent to the communist dictatorship as part of its supplier agreements.

Those agreements oblige distributors to comply with U.S. export laws, which also forbid electronics exports to North Korea, in support of UN sanctions that were levied in the wake of the regime’s illegal explosion of nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009.

“HP is thoroughly investigating the matter,” a corporate spokesperson told Fox News in a statement Monday. “Compliance with U.S. and international trade laws is a high priority for HP. HP investigates any credible breaches of contractual obligations by our partners and resellers.”

The company’s export ban applies to suppliers regardless of where they are located and whether they are international organizations.

In addition, two former members of a UN-appointed panel of experts monitoring the North Korean restrictions have told Fox News that they found the technology transfer by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization “horrible” and “egregious” in the words of one -- “somewhat incompetent and possibly shady,” in the words of the other, in light of the sanctions the UN and its members are supposed to be enforcing.

News of the under-the-radar computer shipment -- and now, the revelation that it was delivered in violation of the manufacturer’s rules -- comes on the crest of heightened tensions between the UN Security Council and the nuclear-ambitious, rogue North Korean regime.

Hours before HP delivered its statement to Fox News, the Security Council had “strongly condemned” the government of newly installed leader Kim Jong Un for its latest provocation, a failed ballistic missile launch that North Korea said was intended to put a satellite in orbit.

The rest of the world viewed the launch as a test of the nation’s ability to deliver nuclear warheads, and a “severe violation” of the previous UN sanctions that ordered the regime to cease and desist its nuclear military ambitions. Even North Korean supporters China and Pakistan joined in the condemnation.

The Security Council -- currently headed by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice – is to announce additional sanctions covering new “entities and items” within the next two weeks.

The latest UN-North Korea standoff underlines the strange nature of the earlier computer shipment to Pyongyang carried out at the behest of WIPO.

Fox News brought the cash-for-computers incident to light after WIPO’s director general, Francis Gurry, held a closed-door meeting with concerned diplomats, including a U.S. representative, in Geneva on March 29.

Click here for for the original report.

The diplomats, in turn, learned of the shipment after WIPO’s staff council voiced concerns about it.

The cash-for-computers deal was orchestrated in a way that made its discovery difficult. Procurement and payment for the WIPO goods was arranged between WIPO’s Geneva headquarters and a shipper in China, facilitated by UN offices in Beijing. The deal apparently bypassed UN offices in North Korea.

Those offices operate under a special oversight regime established after a major scandal in 2008 over financial and technology transfers in North Korea, to ensure that money and goods do not end up in the regime’s nuclear programs.

Click here for original report.

WIPO’s payment of $52,638 to a Chinese supplier and installer for the computer shipment, however, did not go through. It was blocked at the beginning of March by Bank of America, the host bank for UN accounts in China, on grounds that the money transfer for goods shipped to North Korea was a possible violation of U.S. Treasury rules.

The computer equipment itemized in WIPO’s work plans for the installation was manufactured by Hewlett-Packard.

In a legal memorandum delivered to the diplomats in Geneva, WIPO said the shipment was nothing more than “part of WIPO’s technical assistance program” with North Korea, which is completely above board and consisted of “general computer technology” that “does not violate any UN Security Council sanctions.”

The memo acknowledged that payment for the shipment had been stopped due to U.S. laws “enacted in part to implement” the binding UN sanctions.
But it also declared that WIPO, “as an international organization, is not bound by the U.S. national law in this matter” and was still looking for ways to pay for the shipment.

The agency has since said it found a way to pay for the goods through other channels that did not involve U.S. banks.

The WIPO legal memo made no mention of contact with or notification of UN sanctions committees that monitor the restrictions on North Korea before the shipment was delivered.

The most recent Security Council resolution, passed in June 2009, specifically calls on “all States, relevant United Nations bodies and other interested parties, to cooperate fully” with the sanctions committee and its panel of experts, “in particular by supplying any information at their disposal on the implementation of the measures imposed by resolution 1718 (2006) [the previous sanctions measure] and this resolution.”

According to George Lopez, a professor of political science at Notre Dame University, who served on the North Korea sanctions panel of experts from November 2010 to July 2011, WIPO’s lack of communication with the sanctions committee is a puzzle.

"Were I still on the panel of experts,” he said, “I am sure some of us would insist that the UN secretariat issue a memo to all agencies reminding them that no movement of goods or individual experts into a sanctions state should occur without some exchange of ideas and views with the panel and/or the UN sanctions committee for that case.”

Lopez also pointed out that the UN sanctions against North Korea prohibit the shipment of “luxury goods” to the regime and even if they did not qualify in any other way, the computers sent to Pyongyang fit that description.

“The Japanese have actually arrested and indicted people who have illegally exported computers to the DPRK in at least two instances,” he said, citing reports of a shipment to a North Korean computer center believed to be a focal point for hacking attacks on South Korea.

According to Victor Comras, member of a UN panel of experts from 2009 to 2010, “something is not kosher when a UN agency takes advantage of being immune to knowingly violate U.S. laws.”

“They are walking through the cracks and loopholes of the sanctions regulations,” he told said. “There should be some recognition that international organizations themselves are obliged to follow the rules.”

“It clearly has hurt the credibility of the U.N. and its sanctions. To what end?”

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News and can be found on Twitter@GeorgeRussell