South Korea Ponders, North Korea Threatens

South Korea said Wednesday it formed a task force to look at how to impose U.N. sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear test, as the communist nation warned it would take countermeasures against any such move by the South.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution sanctioning the North for its Oct. 9 nuclear test, but South Korea — a major aid provider to the impoverished North — has been reluctant to adopt stern measures against its volatile neighbor.

The U.N. resolution calls for all member countries to state how they plan to implement sanctions on the North within 30 days from its Oct. 14 adoption.

Seoul's task force held its first meeting Tuesday, Vice Foreign Minister Lee Kyu-hyung told a regular news briefing Wednesday.

But the North warned that any move by South Korea to impose trade, travel and financial sanctions would be seen as a "declaration of confrontation" that would elicit "corresponding measures" from Pyongyang.

The North also warned the sanctions could cause a breakdown in inter-Korean relations.

"If North-South relations collapse due to reckless and imprudent sanctions against us, the South Korean authorities will be fully responsible for it and will have to pay a high price," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said in a statement, carried by its official Korean Central News Agency.

There was saber-rattling in Washington, too. Ongoing Iraq conflict or not, the top U.S. general insisted Tuesday that the U.S. can handle another front, such as North Korea, reports .

During a Pentagon news conference, at a reporter's suggestion that North Korea might attempt some military action over U.N. sanctions, Joint Chiefs Chair General Peter Pace insisted it would not be a problem.

"None of our potential enemies should miscalculate the capacity of this nation," Pace said.

As if issuing a warning, Pace pointed out in addition to the couple hundred thousand Americans involved in the Gulf area, 2 million more in the U.S. military can generate overwhelming combat power, quickly, "and the outcome would not be in doubt."

How to enforce the sanctions has been an issue between the United States and China, the North's last-remaining major ally. Beijing voted for the U.N. resolution and says it will meet its obligations, but is concerned that excessive measures could worsen the situation.

Still, the U.S. envoy to six-party talks on halting North Korea's nuclear program said Pyongyang's nuclear test brought Washington and Beijing closer.

"China has been in a very important relationship with us for many years and at no time did we feel any closer together with China than we felt in the wake of the North Korea provocation," Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters in Fiji on Wednesday.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned pressuring the North could backfire.

"One should never lead the situation into an impasse, one should never put one of the negotiating sides in a position from which it virtually has no way out but one: an escalation of the situation," he said Wednesday in a nationally televised, live question-and-answer broadcast.

In its first official confirmation of the North's nuclear test, South Korea's Science and Technology Ministry said Wednesday that xenon — an inert gas released when there is a nuclear explosion — has been found in air samples collected in South Korea.

The finding corroborates a U.S. government confirmation last week that cited radioactive debris detected in air samples.

The nuclear test had continued repercussions across the border, where South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok offered to step down, apologizing over the North's test, the office of President Roh Moo-hyun said.

Lee has been a strong supporter of engagement with North Korea, and his critics accuse him of being pro-Pyongyang.

The South Korean task force reviewing the U.N. sanctions is expected to focus on two key inter-Korean economic projects criticized for providing hard currency to the cash-strapped North.

One project is a tourism program run by South Korea at North Korea's Diamond Mountain and the other is a South Korea-run industrial complex in the North Korean city of Kaesong. At least $900 million have been sent to the North under the projects since the late 1990s, and Washington suspects the funds might have helped the North's arms programs.

South Korea, which prizes the projects as key symbols of inter-Korean reconciliation, has been unwilling to halt the projects but plans to make some adjustments to meet its requirements under a U.N. sanctions resolution against the North.

Also at issue is whether South Korea would expand its participation in a U.S.-led international drive aimed at stopping and searching ships and aircraft suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction or related material.

South Korea has been reluctant to fully participate in the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, because of concerns it could lead to clashes with North Korea and spoil efforts to persuade the communist state to give up its nuclear ambitions through diplomacy.