Expelled N. Korea Inspectors In China

Two U.N. nuclear inspectors expelled by North Korea arrived in China on Tuesday, leaving behind a nuclear program increasingly isolated from international scrutiny.

The two inspectors — believed to be a Lebanese man and a Chinese woman — emerged from the arrival hall at Beijing's Capital Airport on a flight from Pyongyang just after 10 a.m.

They refused to discuss the North Korean situation, saying they were on their way to the International Atomic Energy Agency's headquarters in Vienna.

"We cannot comment on anything at this stage," the man said, mobbed by reporters.

North Korea ordered the expulsion of the two U.N. monitors on Friday, depriving the U.N. atomic agency of its final means of monitoring the North's plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.

The inspectors' departure followed Pyongyang's hints Sunday that it might abandon the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, a move that would deepen the crisis over the country's decision to restart its nuclear facilities.

North Korea is dangerously isolating itself from the world community, including China, by its declared determination to revive its nuclear weapons program, a White House spokesman said Monday.

"The international community has made clear that North Korea's relations with the outside world hinge on its termination of its nuclear programs," deputy White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters covering President's Bush's holiday respite at his Texas ranch.

McClellan commented a day after Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the impasse has yet to reach crisis proportions and that time remains to find a diplomatic resolution.

At the same time, preparations for war continued in the confrontation with Iraq, which some key senators said ranks far behind North Korea as a threat to the United States.

McClellan noted that China, North Korea's traditional communist ally, "has said its position is that there be no nuclearization of the Korean peninsula."

"North Korea is the one that is isolating itself by its actions; North Korea must withdraw the measures it has taken," the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Russia, North Korea's other longtime ally, warned the communist regime Monday not to withdraw from an international agreement to halt the spread of nuclear weapons, a blow to the North's efforts to cast the nuclear issue as a dispute strictly with the United States.

"Pyongyang's recent decisions to send away IAEA inspectors and prepare for renewal of the uncontrolled work of its nuclear energy complex cannot but elicit regret," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said.

Also in Moscow, Mikhail Lysenko, the director of the Foreign Ministry's security and disarmament department, warned Pyongyang against withdrawing from the treaty. He said Russia supports the 1994 agreement and insists on a "constructive dialogue" among all involved, and that Moscow was consulting with both Koreas, the United States, Japan and China.

Powell, making the rounds of the Sunday television talk shows, said the United States was working with other countries to pressure North Korea into reversing its decision to restart its weapons program and expel U.N. inspectors monitoring its main nuclear complex.

Indeed, Powell objected to calling the North Korean problem a crisis.

"We don't believe it rises to a crisis atmosphere," he said in a televised interview. "Nobody's alerting forces. It's a serious problem, and we're deeply engaged in trying to do something about it."

Continuing to make the case against Iraq, Powell insisted Saddam Hussein's regime posed the more immediate threat.

"Iraq is a regime that has stood in defiance of 16 U.N. resolutions, and we're waiting to see whether they're going to be in defiance of this new one," Powell said during a broadcast interview. "And they have used this kind of capability against their own people, against their neighbors. And they have stood in this kind of defiance for 12 years."

Still, Powell said the United States has yet to decide whether to attack Iraq.

"The president has not made a decision yet with respect to the use of military force or with respect to going back to the United Nations," Powell said. "And of course, we are positioning ourselves and positioning our military forces for whatever might be required."

U.N. inspectors should be given adequate time to search for Iraqi weapons before any decision is reached about launching an invasion, he said. Powell also said the United States was committed to making sure Iraq remains intact as a nation if Saddam is overthrown.

Iraq's fate, he said, depends on the Saddam's behavior regarding the inspection teams, sent by the United Nations at the urging of the Bush administration.

Others argued that the U.S. emphasis on Iraq was misplaced.

"There is no urgency in Iraq. As long as the inspectors and the international community is there, there is little or no prospect of them being able to do much mischief," Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., said during a broadcast interview. "By any measure, in my view, if things get out of hand in North Korea, a lot more damage can be done to U.S. interests than can be done in the near term in Iraq."

Powell said the United States, while willing to communicate with North Korea, would do nothing to help Pyongyang unless it changes its behavior.

"They want a negotiation where we give them something for them to stop the bad behavior," he said on ABC's "This Week." "And what we can't do is enter into a negotiation right away where we are appeasing them for bad behavior."

Powell said Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will go to South Korea next month to talk to U.S. allies — but not to North Korea "at this time."

North Korean officials, for their part, urged the United States to negotiate.

"It is quite self-evident that dialogue is impossible without sitting face to face, and a peaceful settlement of the issue would be unthinkable without dialogue," said a government spokesman quoted on KCNA, the North's state-run news agency.

Several key members of Congress also called for talks with North Korea, but on Monday a U.S. official said no talks had been scheduled.

"We don't lose anything by doing that," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a conference call Sunday with Connecticut reporters. "That's what I wish the administration had done. The Bush administration, in taking a military option off the table and not negotiating with (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il has left us with a policy that seems nowhere and has created a crisis."

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told NBC "I suspect that there are going to be negotiations" of some sort.

"They may not be directly between the United States and North Korea. It could very well be through the Chinese, through the South Koreans, through the Japanese, through a combination of multilateral international community," he said.