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US Sees N Korea As Target In War On Terrorism

THE FEBRUARY 8 Vinalon Factory on North Korea's east coast produces a stiff, dye-resistant, virtually unusable textile invented by a local scientist and touted by Pyongyang as superior to nylon. The factory is also rumoured to manufacture a more sinister commodity: chemical weapons.

Finding out exactly what is produced at the facility, and at others in North Korea believed to manufacture and test weapons of mass destruction, is emerging as a controversial new priority for Washington as it prepares the second phase of its declared war on terrorism. United States officials expressing that priority have stoked fears in Seoul that constructive dialogue with Pyongyang could be the first casualty of this next phase.

Not for the first time, North Korea has been grouped with Iraq as part of Washington's military campaign against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks. On November 19, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton told a meeting of the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva that North Korea's biological warfare programme ranked second only to Iraq's as a threat to international security. "North Korea likely has the capability to produce sufficient quantities of biological agents for military purposes," said Bolton.

Those comments -- which were cleared by the U.S. National Security Council -- were the strongest yet by a senior U.S. official about North Korea's biological weapons programme, about which little is known. Five days later, President George W. Bush again linked North Korea with the war on terrorism. Calling on Pyongyang to permit inspections of its weapons sites, Bush told reporters: "We want to know. Are they developing weapons of mass destruction? And they ought to stop proliferating. So part of the war on terror is to deny terrorist weapons."

Nerves jangled in Seoul as Pyongyang was mentioned in the same breath as Iraq. Short of an invasion from the North, it is unlikely that Seoul would agree to a U.S. military strike against North Korea. But there are fears that a hardening attitude in Washington could lead to a stand-off similar to the showdown in 1994 over Pyongyang's nuclear programme. Conflict was narrowly averted then when former President Jimmy Carter brokered a deal with Pyongyang.

Pro-engagement figures see history repeating itself unless the Bush administration grasps the difference between Iraq, which refuses to negotiate away its weapons, and North Korea, which has signalled a willingness to do so.

"It's essentially impossible for George Bush to blow North Korea up," says John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defence-policy think-tank. "But he can certainly embark on a policy of malign neglect in which Washington ignores North Korea's attention-getting gestures, like missile tests, forcing North Korea to escalate its attention-getters and having them misinterpreted as preparations for war."

Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to Seoul, sees a crisis on the horizon if the Bush administration's policy on North Korea is hijacked by hawks like Bolton and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz. "I think Bolton is an ideologue and a hardliner and has behaved irresponsibly" by delivering his speech, says Gregg. In June Gregg helped goad Bush back toward conciliation with Pyongyang by explaining the benefits of dialogue in a memo sent to George Bush Senior, who passed it on to the White House. "I'm not saying they don't have {weapons}, but the way to get rid of them is not to bully but to engage."

At a minimum, Washington is sending mixed signals. The remarks by Bush and Bolton contrast with Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly's generally upbeat and pro-engagement assessment in late November. It could be the good cop, bad cop routine. But some observers worry that the remarks by Bush and Bolton are a more honest expression of the administration's stance toward Pyongyang than are its public comments supporting engagement. "Bush's mood towards North Korea is decidedly sceptical, borderline hostile," says a congressional aide handling East Asia.

Bush's remarks, as his spokesman Ari Fleischer later stressed, contained nothing new and went nowhere near proposing a military strike against North Korea. Nonetheless, the State Department hurriedly contacted South Korea's embassy in Washington with reassurances that the U.S. still supported of Seoul's policy of engaging North Korea, according to a senior South Korean government official.

But in the context of a broadening war against terrorism to include nations which supply terrorists with missiles or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, the remarks created considerable unease in Seoul. South Koreans point out that Bush seemed to call for inspections of the entire gamut of Pyongyang's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction -- something North Korea is unlikely to concede.

"As a citizen of Seoul, I know that if Bush wants a second war against North Korea, South Korea will suffer greatly," says Choi Won Ki, a reporter covering North Korea for Seoul's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. Korean policymakers fret that the heightened rhetoric could wreck gains made in engaging North Korea, which include increased business exchanges, family reunions and a fading of military tensions.

Explains the senior South Korean official: "It created unnecessary concern not only for the South Korean public but also in North Korea that the Korean peninsula can be a battleground again. We want a peaceful atmosphere on the peninsula."

Dialogue with North Korea, a process pushed hardest by South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung, who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, has been almost nonexistent since Bush took office. Pyongyang broke off talks with Washington in March after Bush publicly stated his mistrust of Kim Jong Il. Inter-Korean talks have been fitful at best since then, despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's insistence that he was ready for talks with North Korea "anywhere, any time."

Powell's offer was viewed as a softening of Washington's stance. But September 11 has bolstered the hardliners. One consequence may be the suspension of construction of two light-water reactors that a consortium of nations agreed to build for North Korea in return for dismantling its older reactors capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

The Bush administration is pushing for earlier inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure North Korea's nuclear facilities pose no threat before key components for the new reactors are shipped. "If the situation is like this I don't think North Korea will fully cooperate," says the senior South Korean official.

Larry Niksch, an Asia specialist with the Library of Congress, believes Bush's broad-brush reference on November 26 to all weapons of mass destruction might indicate a cloudy future for the reactor project. "With the new emphasis post-September 11, the Bush administration may speed up a decision on whether to continue or suspend the project if North Korea is not in compliance."

What weapons is North Korea hiding? It is believed to have abided by the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework under which it gets the new reactors. But the Central Intelligence Agency believes Pyongyang might have kept enough plutonium to build one or two nuclear weapons. The inspections are meant to find whether it did.

North Korea has the missile systems required to deliver a nuclear warhead. By nature difficult to conceal from satellite cameras, North Korea's missile sites are well documented, though there is dispute over the threat they pose. The best known site is Musudan, on the northeast coast near the towns of Nodong and Taepodong (literally "cannon town") -- after which the North's two biggest missiles are named. It is from Musudan that Nodong missiles with a range of 1,000 kilometres were tested to a range of 500 kilometres in 1993.

In August 1998, Pyongyang stunned the world by testing a three-stage Taepodong 1 missile over Japan. The missile splashed into the Pacific Ocean. Work is believed to be well advanced on a Taepodong 2 missile, capable of travelling more than 4,000 kilometres. No tests have been conducted since 1998, but test preparations at Musudan for a rocket the size of the Taepodong 2 were detected by U.S. intelligence in 1999. According to media reports, North Korea may have tested Taepodong missile engines at Musudan, without lift-off, in late 1999 and early 2000.

Copyright 2001 Far East Economic Review