BY MEREDITH ALEXANDER

Working with their counterparts from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford scientists, engineers and arms control experts are trying to put to rest fears about North Korea making nuclear weapons.

A joint team from the university and the lab released a study May 1 asserting that they are able to assess accurately North Korean compliance with a 1994 nuclear materials agreement. Some politicians -- including President George W. Bush -- have worried that the agreement, which tracks that country's production and use of weapon-making materials, would never be enforceable or "verifiable." The verification of the agreement could confirm that North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is not making bombs.

Michael May, former director of the Lawrence Livermore Lab, professor emeritus of management science and engineering and affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), edited the report. Other authors from Stanford included George Bunn, consulting professor at the Institute for International Studies, and Chaim Braun and William Sailor, nuclear engineers who also are affiliates of CISAC.

The co-authors presented their research at a closed-door workshop at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., on April 30. Representatives of Japan, South Korea, Congress and the Bush administration were present.

Under the international agreement known as "The Agreed Framework," the DPRK must declare how much possible weapon-making material (namely plutonium) it has produced, track its disposal and eventually dismantle the nuclear reactor where it is made.

In return, the United States and its allies -- including South Korea, Japan and the European Union -- have promised to provide, under tight security, two large nuclear-power reactors and to give fuel oil to the North Koreans for electricity production.

To make sure it is keeping its end of the bargain, DPRK has to allow inspection of its nuclear facilities. Some critics of the framework, however, have contended that the North Koreans may have a clandestine nuclear stash that inspectors have never been able to root out.

"The Agreed Framework with North Korea is controversial right now," May said. "The policy is being reviewed by the Bush administration and there's a question as to which way to go in their minds."

This new research, which was originally proposed by former secretary of defense William Perry (now a senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies), could help. The Stanford-Livermore study shows that under certain circumstances, an inspection can accurately show whether or not the North Koreans are complying with the agreement.

While the study does not go so far as to recommend keeping the agreement in place, it sheds light on the agreement's potential value, Bunn said.

The study may give the Bush team a new perspective on how to deal with North Korea. "Our hope is that this study will be useful to the new administration in deciding what to do [about North Korea]," Bunn said. "The president has said clearly that verification is terribly important in relation to North Korea."

May also saw an important place for the report. "It'll provide a necessary, useful baseline as to just what's technically involved in verification, how much the DPRK has to cooperate ... and it flags the problems which can be expected," he said. May reported that one of the representatives of the Bush team who came to the Washington workshop called the research "the most comprehensive report he'd seen" on North Korea.

The full report, "Verifying the Agreed Framework," is available on CISAC's website at http://cisac.stanford.edu .

• Center for International Security and Cooperation