U.S. To Resume N. Korea Flights

The Air Force prepared Wednesday to resume reconnaissance flights off the coast of North Korea, 10 days after Korean fighter jets intercepted an Air Force plane equipped to monitor missile tests, a senior U.S. official said.

It was not immediately clear whether the Air Force planned to use fighter jets to escort the reconnaissance flights, but officials said earlier this week that escorting was highly unlikely. The United States has always asserted its right to conduct aerial surveillance in international airspace without armed escort, and rarely has encountered hostile interference.

Meanwhile, Japan has sent a high-tech surveillance battleship to the Sea of Japan, the Defense Agency said Thursday, amid Japanese media reports that North Korea could be preparing a ballistic missile test.

Defense Agency spokesman Yoshiyuki Ueno confirmed that the Aegis-equipped destroyer, with top-of-the-line surveillance capabilities, has been dispatched to the Sea of Japan, which lies between Japan and North Korea.

Ueno refused to say when it was deployed, and described its mission as part of regular patrol activities.

But the dispatch came as two major Japanese newspapers reported North Korea appears to be making final preparations to test-launch its Rodong ballistic missile.

On March 2, four armed North Korean fighter jets intercepted an RC-135S Cobra Ball over the Sea of Japan about 150 miles off North Korea's coast. U.S. officials said one of the fighters used its radar in a manner that indicated it might be preparing to attack, although no shots were fired.

The U.S. plane broke off its mission and returned unharmed to its base at Kadena, Japan. Since then there have been no U.S. reconnaissance flights off North Korea's coast, officials said.

The official who, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Air Force was preparing to resume reconnaissance flights provided no other details.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said he could not comment.

"As we have stated, we continue to fly legal reconnaissance missions in a variety of places around the world, but we cannot comment on specific plans," Davis said.

Davis said the North Korean pilots in the March 2 intercept appeared to be trying to draw the RC-135S to North Korea.

"Clearly the actions of the North Korean air crews, including hand gestures by one of the pilots, suggests that this was a coordinated attempt to force our aircraft to divert to North Korea," Davis said.

The Pentagon said the March 2 intercept was the first such incident with North Korea since April 1969, when a North Korean plane shot down a U.S. Navy EC-121 surveillance plane, killing all 31 Americans aboard.

In Congress, the commander of the 37,000 U.S. forces in South Korea, Gen. Leon J. Laporte, said he expected North Korea to "continue to politically escalate the situation" but not attack South Korea. He said additional provocations of U.S. surveillance planes were possible, as well as missile tests and additional steps toward producing nuclear weapons.

At the same hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, whose area of responsibility includes Korea, said he saw the probability of war on the Korean peninsula as "low right now."

Separately, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that for the United States to fully engage with North Korea, it must agree to eliminate its nuclear weapons programs and meet U.S. requirements in five other areas: human rights, terrorism, missile development and export, and conventional forces near South Korea's border.

Kelly held out little hope that North Korea would give up its nuclear ambitions.

"There is not the slightest sign they have any interest in stopping," he said.

The United States uses a variety of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance methods to monitor North Korea's military activity, including developments in its nuclear weapons program.