Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
09/11/2015
The U.S.-South Korea “123 Agreement” renewed in April will enter into force between Oct. 29 and Dec. 7 without any congressional objections, independent nuclear nonproliferation expert and former House and Senate staffer Jodi Lieberman said yesterday during a panel discussion on the agreement at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Lieberman also predicted that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing on the issue by mid-October, in part, because Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) works to address outstanding issues before his committee in due course. “The senator is very much of the mind that regular order should be conducted, which means that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will likely have a hearing on the agreement in the next month or so,” Lieberman said. “Again, you know how congressional schedules can slip. And I believe that the House has the same intent.”
Lieberman added that she thinks Republicans and Democrats have efficiently negotiated and vetted the most pressing concerns that South Korea’s nuclear program could present, such as pyroprocessing, a high-temperature method of recycling reactor waste into fuel, as well as the granting to both parties of “advance consent,” which allows the countries to enrich and reprocess each other’s nuclear fuel. In a June message, President Obama told Congress the agreement “would permit the transfer of material, equipment (including reactors), components, information, and technology for nuclear research and nuclear power production.”
Legally, Congress can review a civil nuclear agreement for up to two time periods totaling 90 days of continuous session, according to the Arms Control Association. Obama on June 16 presented the signed deal to Congress, starting a 30-day clock for the administration to discuss the agreement with the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees. The accord can enter into force if Congress does not pass a blocking resolution within the subsequent 60 days in session.
Lieberman also noted that the existing agreement expires in early 2016, but the congressional clock ends before then. “Timing will play on the side of a U.S.-Korea ‘123 Agreement’ in that everybody is so focused on Iran, and screaming about how that agreement falls short, and this agreement simply doesn’t match up, both in terms of worries as well as timing.”
