US To Up Ante On North Korea

The Bush administration has prepared a comprehensive plan to intensify financial and political pressure on North Korea that could eventually confront the nation with the prospect of economic collapse, if it does not abandon its effort to make nuclear weapons, according to senior administration officials quoted in Sunday's New York Times.

Under the new policy, the Times says, the neighbors of North Korea would be encouraged to reduce economic ties with it; the United Nations Security Council could threaten economic sanctions, and the American military might intercept missile shipments to deprive the North of money from weapon sales.

The Associated Press says it was told much the same thing by U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity late Saturday.

Administration officials told the newspaper the threat of growing isolation was the best way to force North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions and, if it refused, to bring down the government. Officials say that under their plan, which they call "tailored containment," they are willing to negotiate with North Korea but only if it first dismantles its nuclear weapons program.

To offer new incentives, officials say, would be to reward the North Korean government for failing to live up to earlier commitments.

"It is called 'tailored containment' because this is an entirely different situation than Iraq or Iran," the Times quotes a senior administration official as saying. "It is a lot about putting political stress and putting economic stress. It also requires maximum multinational cooperation."

But the administration's new containment policy is being criticized by former United States officials and proliferation experts, the Times reports. They say that the allied nations are unlikely to apply the pressure that would be needed to shake the North Korean economy and that the policy lacks a vital element: an open channel for direct American diplomacy with North Korea.

The U.N. nuclear agency said on Saturday that its inspectors would abide by Pyongyang's expulsion order and leave North Korea by Tuesday.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Saturday, Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said the North Koreans were "still pursuing their policy of defiance. They continue to escalate a crisis situation."

But he held out hope that diplomatic efforts would push North Korea's leadership to reverse course.

The IAEA's board of governors will meet at the agency's Vienna headquarters on Jan. 6, when it will consider whether to refer the matter to the Security Council - a grave diplomatic maneuver that could lead to sanctions or other punitive actions against North Korea.

"The emerging consensus is that the board would like to give diplomacy - and North Korea - another chance to comply with its international obligations," ElBaradei told the AP by telephone from Sri Lanka, where he is vacationing.

The agency's inspectors were monitoring North Korea's main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, which has been frozen since 1994 under an agreement with the United States that fell apart this year. The accord was designed to ensure that the isolated state does not divert nuclear materials to make weapons.

ElBaradei said Friday that the North's demand that inspectors leave would rob the agency of its last means to ensure facilities weren't being used to produce nuclear weapons.

It left satellites as virtually the only means for the outside world to keep tabs on developments at the complex.

The North removed the agency's monitoring seals and surveillance cameras from the complex earlier this week and began moving in fuel rods needed to restart a 5-kilowatt reactor.

Robert Gallucci, the former senior U.S. negotiator who helped broker the nonproliferation agreement with North Korea in 1994, told CBS News, Radio, "I think we are in a genuine crisis, given what the North Koreans have done and what they may well be on the verge of doing."

South Korea was sending envoys to Beijing and Moscow, North Korea's longtime allies, to seek help in defusing the situation.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov on Saturday urged the U.S. to seek dialogue rather than confrontation with North Korea. "You cannot achieve anything through accusations, pressure or tight demands, not to mention threats," Losyukov told the Interfax news agency. "That will only make it worse."

North Korea disclosed in October that it has a secret nuclear weapons program. In response, the United States and its allies halted vital shipments of heavy oil promised under the 1994 deal. Pyongyang says it is reactivating the Yongbyon reactor to generate electricity it would have used the oil to produce.

It has begun moving fresh fuel rods to the reactor and has announced it will reactivate a reprocessing laboratory where plutonium can be extracted from uranium in spent fuel rods. Plutonium can be used to make nuclear bombs.
There are 8,000 spent fuel rods in storage at the lab, and U.S. officials say those rods could produce enough plutonium to make several bombs.

Pyongyang said it was reopening the reprocessing lab to give "safe storage" to spent fuel rods that will come from the reactor it plans to restart. The IAEA did not comment on the report on the lab.

Russia and China both urged Washington to seek dialogue rather than confrontation with North Korea.

The White House was careful to say again Friday that military action against North Korea was not being contemplated.

A trip to the region by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly was considered likely. He had already been considering a visit to Seoul for talks with the new South Korean government.

The administration also is quietly encouraging the U.N. monitoring agency to take the crisis to the Security Council, as the agency's head indicated in the Saturday interview that it might.

U.S. officials said they were not campaigning for the move overtly because they fear backlash from allies already dubious about President Bush's use of the United Nations to pursue a tough line against Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

While the president settled into a weeklong stay at his Texas ranch, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other top administration officials met Friday at the White House to consider how to fine-tune a U.S. policy that is mostly rhetorical.

Congressional doubt that the administration was dealing creatively with the nuclear threat, exacerbated by the expulsion of the inspectors, was voiced by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who may challenge Mr. Bush for re-election.

"What happened in North Korea today is predictable and totally anticipated based on this administration's complete avoidance of a responsible approach to North Korea in over a year and a half," Kerry said.

North Korean troops have also begun bringing machine guns into the demilitarized zone that separates the North from the South. The move has no military significance but it violates the terms of the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.