Nkor: Nuke War Could Be Close

North Korea said Saturday that it is ready for war with the United States - and that nuclear war could erupt on the Korean Peninsula at "any moment" - as it accused Washington of planning massive war games to prepare for an attack on the communist state.

In Seoul on Saturday, in his first major policy speech since taking office, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun warned of a possible "calamity" from the standoff over North Korea's nuclear program unless a peaceful resolution is found quickly.

And The New York Times reports in its Saturday editions that administration experts on North Korea and intelligence officials have told President Bush that they expect that in the next few weeks the North will turn on the reprocessing plant that can produce weapons-grade plutonium, which a top U.N. official has said would be a "disaster."

The North's official news agency, KCNA, said Saturday that Pyongyang will take "a self-defensive measure when it thinks that the U.S. pre-emptive attack is imminent."

"In that case the measure will involve combat means as strong as those mobilized by the U.S.," it said, without elaborating. "The people and the People's Army of the DPRK will certainly wipe out the aggressors with the might of single-hearted unity."

DPRK is short for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.

The U.S. regularly conducts military exercises with South Korea. One of the annual exercises - called "Reception, Staging, Onward Movement and Integration" - will take place March 19-26. A second exercise - called "Foal Eagle" - is scheduled for March 4-April 2.

The U.S. military command in Seoul said the joint drills are "defense-oriented" and are not related to the ongoing dispute over North Korea's nuclear program.

"These unceasing U.S. war drills drive the situation on the Korean Peninsula to such a dangerous pitch of tension that a nuclear war may break out on it any moment," KCNA said.

"The DPRK is keeping itself fully ready to repel the U.S. military attack," said KCNA, monitored in Seoul.

Washington has repeatedly said it has no plans to invade North Korea.

Pyongyang Saturday also accused the U.S. military of conducting more than 180 spy plane flights targeting the communist country last month, and said the United States was trying to "start a war."

Citing military sources, the North's official KCNA news agency said Saturday that a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance plane had violated North Korean airspace above the country's east coast almost every day since Feb. 21. Each flight lasted hours, KCNA said.

The North's east coast is dotted with batteries that U.S. intelligence officials believe can launch ballistic missiles.

North Korea frequently accuses the U.S. military of running espionage flights over its territories. But such allegations have become more frequent in recent days amid intensifying tensions over North Korea's nuclear activities.

In Seoul, 30,000 pro-U.S. demonstrators jammed a downtown plaza Saturday to support the U.S. troop presence in South Korea and condemn North Korea as a "rabid dog" trying to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

The demonstrators, many of them veterans clad in military uniforms, waved South Korean and U.S. flags and shouted: "We oppose the withdrawal of U.S. military from South Korea!" The U.S. military was the key deterrent against North Korea's military ambitions, they said.

Roh's speech and the rally in Seoul were timed to mark a March 1 Korean holiday commemorating a failed nationwide revolt against Japanese imperial rule in 1919. Japan controlled the Korean peninsula as a colony from 1910 to 1945.

Roh, an outspoken advocate for engagement with Pyongyang, said he "adamantly" opposes North Korea's nuclear development but the issue must be resolved "peacefully."

"The North Korean nuclear issue is a matter that must be resolved urgently," Roh said. "If peace on the Korean Peninsula collapses for whatever reason, it would bring about a tremendous calamity that we cannot cope with."

On the eve of Roh's inauguration on Tuesday, North Korea test-fired a missile into the sea off its east coast, ratcheting up tensions.

Anticipating a second test, Japanese Deputy Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said Saturday that Pyongyang may fire its long-range Taepodong ballistic missile toward the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, Kyodo news agency reported.

South Korea sees Pyongyang's recent maneuvers as aimed at forcing the United States into direct dialogue to sign a non-aggression treaty with the isolated country - a demand which North Korea repeated Friday.

Washington, however, says North Korea must first abandon its nuclear ambitions. U.S. officials have also ruled out a formal non-aggression treaty with Pyongyang, though they say a written security guarantee is possible. They also say the issue should be handled by the U.N. Security Council, which plans to take up the matter following a referral from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

Roh has urged both the United States and North Korea to engage in dialogue to end tensions.

The nuclear dispute flared in October when Washington said North Korean officials had admitted to pursuing a nuclear program, which violated a 1994 pact.

Washington and its allies cut off oil shipments to the impoverished communist state. The North responded by saying it would reactivate its frozen facilities from an earlier nuclear program. It also expelled U.N. monitors and withdrew from the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The Times reports that Bush administration officials say they believe that North Korea might time a re-start of the reprocessing plant to coincide with the beginning of any military action against Iraq, a moment when the North may think that the United States is distracted.

Spy satellites show a steady stream of activity around the reprocessing plant, and detected a test last month of the power system that would have to be activated before the country's stockpile of 8,000 spent fuel rods could be turned into plutonium, according to several officials with access to the intelligence, who spoke with the Times. A senior official described the activity as "checking off the list, one by one."

"Once they start reprocessing, it's a bomb a month from now until summer," he concluded.

After impoverished North Korea has enough plutonium to create what it considers a credible nuclear threat, deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage warned Congress earlier this month, it could sell plutonium to "a nonstate actor or a rogue state."

So, as American troops prepare for possible war with Iraq, Mr. Bush's top intelligence officials have begun to depart from the White House effort to play down the North Korea problem in public, describing the situation as a "crisis," the Times reports. The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, said this could be "the most serious challenge to U.S. interests in the Northeast Asia area in a generation."

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said that while he was concerned about North Korea's action this week to restart the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which could produce the raw material for a bomb, restarting the reprocessing facility would be "a disaster."

It would, he said, permit the country to "produce several atomic bombs in half a year."

The urgency of the threat has sharpened a behind-the-scenes struggle within the administration over how to deal with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. As the Times reports it, a parade of current and former officials — including Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser in the first Bush administration, and former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, who was special envoy for the Clinton administration on North Korea — have warned in recent weeks that the current White House approach is failing, and that time is not on Mr. Bush's side.

Several of these officials have approached top Bush administration aides, including Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to warn that the administration will ultimately have to negotiate directly with the North — a step Mr. Bush has refused to take, unless North Korea begins first to disarm.

Armitage, who has long experience with North Korea, used his testimony in Congress to try to expand that strategy, and his efforts left Mr. Bush "off-the-wall angry," said a senior administration official, whose account was corroborated for the Times by several White House officials.