North Korea issues warning to U.S.

By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post

SHANGHAI, China — As North Korea pressed forward with plans to resuscitate a nuclear reactor that the Bush administration has said could produce weapons of mass destruction, the leading military official in the isolated Communist country yesterday threatened a "fight to the end" against the United States.

South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, shown here at an orphanage in Seoul, advocates dialogue with the North. Associated Press

Kim's fiery words came a day after his U.S. counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld, pledged that the Bush administration would not be deterred from attacking North Korea by preoccupation with preparations for war in Iraq. The threats from Washington and Pyongyang raised tensions on the Korean Peninsula close to the level of 1994, when President Clinton considered bombing North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor before a settlement was negotiated.

Under the terms of that deal, North Korea formally renounced its nuclear weapons program and shut down the reactor in exchange for shipments of fuel oil from the United States and its allies. But the Bush administration halted those shipments this month, following a disclosure that North Korea had been secretly pursuing its nuclear weapons program. North Korea, in response, threatened to reactivate the reactor.

Although North Korea has threatened to take that step, it has yet to declare that it has followed through. On Sunday, North Korea confirmed that it had cut seals that once enclosed the facilities and dismantled U.N. monitoring equipment, leaving the rest of the world guessing about what is being done with 8,000 nuclear fuel containers stored there — enough plutonium to build a half-dozen nuclear weapons within several months, according to arms control experts.

Yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. body that monitors the facility, said in a statement that it now has no way of knowing whether North Korea is "diverting nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices," adding that "this rapidly deteriorating situation ... raises grave nonproliferation concerns."

Representatives of the U.N. agency remain at the scene, though handicapped by the lack of surveillance equipment. The U.N. monitors yesterday watched North Korean workers removing the equipment from a plant that holds the fuel containers. In an interview broadcast on CNN television, the director general of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, said that step "would enable them, if they restart the program, to make plutonium in a pretty few months. And that's a pretty disturbing intent."

North Korea has maintained that it must reactivate the reactor to produce electricity. But ElBaradei said North Korea's removal of monitoring devices at the storage area for spent fuel rods undercuts that claim. "It does not really make any rational sense in terms of their need, so to speak, to produce electricity," he said.

Most analysts construe North Korea's confrontational course as a game of nuclear brinkmanship designed to force the United States to resume aid shipments and sign a nonaggression pact at a time when the Bush administration is focused on Iraq.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, has refused to consider negotiations without a verifiable promise from North Korea that it is observing the 1994 accord.

Yesterday, signs emerged that the Bush administration's hard line may be sowing concern among allies who fear that an American unwillingness to compromise will make North Korea more belligerent, intensifying the prospect of war.

South Korea's president-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, who advocates dialogue with the North, yesterday met in Seoul with the ambassadors of Russia, China and Japan to seek cooperation, according to his spokesman. Roh was elected last week after campaigning to continue South Korea's "sunshine policy," which relies on engagement with the North instead of isolation. That puts him at odds with President Bush, who has labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil," along with Iran and Iraq.

South Korea would likely be devastated by any eruption of hostilities with North Korea and is obviously eager to avoid such an outcome.

The United States has been counting on China to pressure North Korea to halt its nuclear program. China fought alongside North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War and remains its closest ally. China also played a key role in brokering the 1994 deal. Its disintegration has damaged China's prestige at a time when the government is trying to burnish its reputation as a responsible global citizen.

But today, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement that tacitly rebuked the Bush administration's unwillingness to engage in talks without conditions. "We hope that relevant sides can proceed in the overall interest of safeguarding peace and stability and reach a resolution to the issue through dialogue," the ministry said.