NKorea - US turns up heat

2002-12-29 15:36

Judy Lee and Adam Entous

Seoul/Crawford, Texas - North Korea vowed on Sunday it would not buckle under pressure as the United States threatened to impose sanctions and block missile shipments to force the communist state to abandon its nuclear arms programme.

US officials said on Saturday that Washington would look to North Korea's neighbours and allies, and to the United Nations, to intensify pressure on Pyongyang.

The US military and its allies could block North Korean missile shipments as part of a broader effort to curb weapons proliferation, and to deny cash-strapped Pyongyang revenues from its arm sales, they said.

One official called it a "tailored containment" strategy.

"The imperialist reactionaries are seriously mistaken if they think they would bring the Korean people to their knees with pressure," Pyongyang's state-owned KCNA news agency said on Sunday, quoting an editorial in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper.

But the editorial added that the government was keen to settle the crisis in a peaceful way. It did not elaborate.

On Saturday, 10 000 people turned out in a state-sponsored protest in Pyongyang to denounce Washington over its hardline policy on the North's steps to revive a nuclear programme that might have already produced one or two atomic bombs.

North Korea has ordered inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to leave, the latest escalation of a crisis analysts say is aimed at goading Washington and its allies into giving food and energy aid for the starving nation of 22 million.

The United States, keen to keep its focus on Iraq, told North Korea it wanted a peaceful end to the crisis on the world's last Cold War frontier, but would not negotiate under duress.

Pyongyang wants direct talks with Washington.

"This is a country in defiance of its international obligations," said IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei in a statement, after the watchdog agency said its inspectors would quit North Korea on New Year's Eve. "It sets a dangerous precedent for the integrity of the non-proliferation regime."

UN sanctions

Besides the interdiction of shipments, the United Nations, with US backing, may threaten to impose sanctions if the secretive, army-backed regime takes further steps to re-start a nuclear power plant that could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, US officials said.

"If they don't turn it around, this is where we're going to end up. Nobody wants this to happen. But the North Koreans aren't giving anybody much to work with," one official said.

"Our strategy is to stick together and to step up pressure," the official added. "The North Koreans are isolating themselves."

The Bush administration is pushing for the UN Security Council to take up the issue by January 12.

South Korea, whose president and president-elect favour the "sunshine policy" of aid and dialogue in dealing with the North, said it would discuss strategy with the United States and Japan in January.

A foreign ministry statement said Seoul would also "seek close co-operation with China, Russia and the European Union".

North Korea announced last week it was firing up a reprocessing laboratory that could convert spent fuel into the plutonium needed for making nuclear bombs, and had begun moving fresh fuel rods to the five-megawatt research reactor in Yongbyon, about 88km north of Pyongyang.

North Korea told the IAEA its inspectors must leave as a 1994 agreement, under which it was given fuel oil in exchange for compliance on non-proliferation, had broken down.

The United States and its allies cut off the oil after North Korea told a visiting US official in October that it had a covert nuclear programme. The Bush administration has labelled North Korea a member of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq.

Isolated since the end of the Cold War, North Korea has suffered economic collapse and food shortages that have killed two million people and left about a third of its people dependent on foreign food aid.

Force not an option

In Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending a 10-day New Year's vacation at his ranch, the White House said the use of force on the Korean Peninsula was not under consideration.

In Pyongyang, KCNA said the official rally "called on all the Koreans to turn out in the sacred anti-US resistance to drive the US imperialist aggressors out of South Korea, and resolutely frustrate the nuclear racket of the US aimed to bring clouds of war to hang over the Korean nation".

KCNA said the Pyongyang rally expressed "support and solidarity" with South Koreans who have escalated anti-US protests after a court martial acquitted two US soldiers after their military vehicle crushed to death two schoolgirls during a training exercise in June.

In Seoul on Saturday, hundreds of South Koreans scuffled with police as they tried to hold a candlelight vigil for the girls near the US Embassy.

Organisers of the anti-US protests say they plan to rally one million people in central Seoul on New Year's Eve to demand that President George W Bush make a direct apology to the country over the accident.

Bush has issued several apologies, including a statement of sorrow to President Kim Dae-jung in a telephone call this month.

- Reuters