The Orlando Sentinel February 13, 2003
N. Korea Declared In Nuclear Violation;
Officials Also Said The Nation Has A Missile That Can Hit The
Western United States.
By Howard Witt, Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON -- The United Nations' nuclear-watchdog agency on Wednesday declared North Korea in violation of its promises not to pursue atomic weapons, referring the matter to the U.N. Security Council for possible censure or sanctions.
The decision of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, came in response to Pyongyang's expulsion last month of nuclear monitors and its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials testified on Capitol Hill that North Korea possesses an untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.
CIA Director George Tenet, confirming earlier intelligence estimates, said the North Koreans "probably have one or two plutonium-based" nuclear weapons, as well as a long-range missile that could potentially deliver a nuclear warhead to the western United States.
North Korea's missile programs have long been cited by the White House as justification for President Bush's drive to build an antimissile shield, and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer described Tenet's testimony Wednesday as "old news."
However, Tenet's words immediately revived a question the White House has been struggling to answer for months: why the administration appears to be treating Iraq as a more-urgent threat than North Korea.
"They are both important priorities," Fleischer said. "Diplomatic efforts are not working with Iraq, and so therefore the president has put the military option on the front and center of the table. That's not the case with North Korea. The case with North Korea continues to be an assessment that the best way to respond to the serious threat that North Korea presents is through diplomacy."
The Bush administration has hinted it would not immediately press the United Nations to impose economic sanctions against North Korea, but it also has not ruled them out. The North has warned that any vote by the Security Council for sanctions would trigger a new and catastrophic war on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea's ruling-party newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, said Wednesday that "the U.S. should stop running amok just like a puppy knowing no fear of the tiger."
Fleischer said the Security Council has a number of options to deal with North Korea.
"They can include a statement of condemnation of North Korea. They can include sanctions. They can include steps in between," he said. "We will wait to see what happens in the United Nations."
Since October, when Pyongyang admitted it had violated repeated pledges not to pursue nuclear weapons, the regime of Kim Jong Il has taken increasingly provocative steps in an apparent bid to wrest economic and security guarantees from the Bush administration.
The North moved to restart a nuclear reactor that produces plutonium, threatened to begin reprocessing its existing plutonium stocks into weapons-grade material and warned that it may resume testing its long-range missiles.
The Bush administration responded in December by cutting off fuel-oil shipments it had been sending to Pyongyang as part of a 1994 agreement. Under that deal, Washington was helping supply the North's energy needs and assisting in the construction of two civilian nuclear reactors in exchange for the North's abandonment of its nuclear-weapons programs.
The White House has said it is willing to talk directly with Pyongyang, but only if the regime first reverses its nuclear activities. Bush has said he will not be "blackmailed" into negotiating with the North.
At the same time, the president has said he retains the option of a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea if diplomacy fails to work, and the Pentagon has placed 24 long-range bombers on alert for possible deployment to bases in the region. The United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea.
Military experts note that any U.S. strike would pose grave risks of igniting a new Korean war and would almost certainly imperil the South Korean capital, Seoul, which lies just 40 miles from a border studded with thousands of North Korean artillery pieces.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the U.N. nuclear agency's director, said Wednesday that he had been trying for weeks to persuade North Korea to return to compliance with its international nonproliferation commitments. "Unfortunately, all my repeated efforts in so many different ways to engage [North Korea] went in vain," he said.
"The current situation clearly sets a dangerous precedent," ElBaradei said, adding that the North was only a "month or two" from producing "a significant amount of plutonium" that could be diverted for making weapons.
The 35-nation international nuclear agency voted to refer the matter to the Security Council, with Russia and Cuba abstaining.
"We consider the sending of this question to the U.N. Security Council to be a premature and counterproductive step," Russia's representative said. Cuba said there were still "diplomatic options to exhaust."
In referring the North Korea issue to the full Security Council for its consideration, the nuclear agency handed the White House a victory in its efforts to bring broader international influence to bear on Pyongyang.
The administration has tried to enlist the help of Russia, China, Japan and South Korea in pressuring North Korea to renounce its nuclear-weapons program, but each nation, for its own reasons, has been half-hearted in its response so far.
Russia is pursuing economic ties with North Korea, while China fears provoking a collapse of the brittle Pyongyang regime and the ensuing waves of refugees that could wash across its border.
Tokyo is worried about the reach of the North's missiles -- one of which Pyongyang tested by sending it soaring over Japan -- and South Korea continues to court the North with an eye toward eventual reunification.
China in particular has enormous leverage over North Korea because it keeps the regime afloat with energy supplies and economic support, and Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that the administration still hoped to persuade Beijing to use some of that leverage.
"We are doing everything we can to persuade the Chinese that the problem in North Korea is not just a problem between North (Korea) and the United States," Powell told the House International Relations Committee. "It is between North Korea and the region and North Korea and the world."
The North Korean missile that potentially threatens the U.S. mainland is a three-stage version of the Taepo Dong 2, said Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He noted, however, that the missile has not yet been flight-tested.
But after Tenet and Jacoby finished their Senate testimony, U.S. intelligence officials said that North Korea has demonstrated no new missile capabilities in the past year and that the statements by the officials were based on intelligence estimates first compiled in December 2001.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: At United Nations. Mohamed ElBaradei, the U.N. nuclear agency's director, pauses Wednesday during a news conference. He said he has been trying for weeks to persuade North Korea to honor its pacts.
RONALD ZAK FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAP: NORTH KOREAN MISSILE RANGE
The CIA announced Wednesday that North Korea has a ballistic missile capable of reaching parts of the western United States. The weapon is an untested version of its Taepo Dong 2 missile. A 2002 U.S. government report estimated such a missile's range at up to 9,300 miles -- sufficient to strike all of North America.
SOURCES: Federation of American Scientists, Jane's, Knight Ridder Tribune, Globalsecurity.org, The Los Angeles Times
Copyright © 2003, Sentinel Communications Co.
