The visit's major accomplishment was getting the United States and North Korea back to the negotiating table, culminating in the conclusion of the Agreed Framework a few months later. As the crisis escalated, Ritch advocated in secret cables from Vienna that the goal of obtaining a complete account of a small and uncertain amount of nuclear material in North Korea should be subordinated to the aim of controlling the future of the large and certainly dangerous amount of nuclear fuel being unloaded from North Korea's main reactor. For now, North Korea has been averted from acquiring a large nuclear arsenal. The June 2000 historic summit between the leaders of North and South Korea may have eliminated the chance of war on the peninsula. But it remains unclear whether North Korea has enough plutonium for up to one or two nuclear weapons, or is building new facilities to convert this material into nuclear weapons or produce new material for weapons.
Uncertainty continues to plague assessments of the status of North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea has agreed that it will come into full compliance with its safeguards agreement with the IAEA before any significant nuclear components for the first light water reactor are delivered from the West. That date is approaching. A major uncertainty is whether North Korea will, in the end, comply with the Agreed Framework by demonstrating verifiably that it does not have nuclear weapons or the capability to make them. It will also require the vigilance of the people of the world, and leaders like Jimmy Carter, who played a pivotal role in assuring we did not go to war back in 1994.