Nth Korea 'test fires missile': report

[Soldier4Christ]

West mounts 'secret war' to keep nuclear North Korea in check

A PROGRAMME of covert action against nuclear and missile traffic to North Korea and Iran is to be intensified after last week’s missile tests by the North Korean regime.

Intelligence agencies, navies and air forces from at least 13 nations are quietly co-operating in a “secret war” against Pyongyang and Tehran.

It has so far involved interceptions of North Korean ships at sea, US agents prowling the waterfronts in Taiwan, multinational naval and air surveillance missions out of Singapore, investigators poring over the books of dubious banks in the former Portuguese colony of Macau and a fleet of planes and ships eavesdropping on the “hermit kingdom” in the waters north of Japan.

Few details filter out from western officials about the programme, which has operated since 2003, or about the American financial sanctions that accompany it.

But together they have tightened a noose around Kim Jong-il’s bankrupt, hungry nation.

“Diplomacy alone has not worked, military action is not on the table and so you’ll see a persistent increase in this kind of pressure,” said a senior western official.

In a telling example of the programme’s success, two Bush administration officials indicated last year that it had blocked North Korea from obtaining equipment used to make missile propellant.

The Americans also persuaded China to stop the sale of chemicals for North Korea’s nuclear weapons scientists. And a shipload of “precursor chemicals” for weapons was seized in Taiwan before it could reach a North Korean port.

According to John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations and the man who originally devised the programme, it has made a serious dent in North Korea’s revenues from ballistic missile sales.

But the success of Bolton’s brainchild, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), whose stated aim is to stop the traffic in weapons of mass destruction, might also push North Korea into extreme reactions.

Britain is a core member of the initiative, which was announced by President George W Bush in Krakow, Poland, on May 31, 2003. British officials have since joined meetings of “operational experts” in Australia, Europe and the US, while the Royal Navy has contributed ships to PSI exercises. The participants include Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Spain and Singapore, among others.

There has been almost no public debate in the countries committed to military involvement. A report for the US Congress said it had “no international secretariat, no offices in federal agencies established to support it, no database or reports of successes and failures and no established funding”.

To Bolton and senior British officials, those vague qualities make it politically attractive.

In the past 10 months, since the collapse of six-nation talks in Beijing on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, the US and its allies have also tightened the screws on Kim’s clandestine fundraising, which generated some $500m a year for the regime.

Robert Joseph, the US undersecretary for arms control, has disclosed that 11 North Korean “entities” — trading companies or banks — plus six from Iran and one from Syria were singled out for action under an executive order numbered 13382 and signed by Bush.

For the first time, the US Secret Service and the FBI released details of North Korean involvement in forging $100 notes and in selling counterfeit Viagra, cigarettes and amphetamines in collaboration with Chinese gangsters.

The investigators homed in on a North Korean trading company and two banks in Macau. The firm, which had offices next to a casino and a “sauna”, was run by North Koreans with diplomatic passports, who promptly vanished.

The two banks, Seng Heng bank and Banco Delta Asia, denied any wrongdoing. But the Macau authorities stepped in after a run on Banco Delta Asia and froze some $20m in North Korean accounts.

Last week the North Koreans demanded the money as a precondition for talks but the Americans brushed off their protest.

Kim told Hu Jintao, the Chinese president in January that his government was being strangled, diplomats in the Chinese capital said. “He has warned the Chinese leaders his regime could collapse and he knows that is the last thing we want,” said a Chinese source close to the foreign ministry.

The risk being assessed between Washington and Tokyo this weekend is how far Kim can be pushed against the wall before he undertakes something more lethal than last week’s display of force.

The “Dear Leader” has turned North Korea into a military-dominated state to preserve his own inherited role at the apex of a Stalinist personality cult. Although he appears erratic, and North Korea’s rhetoric is extreme, most diplomats who have met him think Kim is highly calculating.

“He is a very tough Korean nationalist and he knows exactly how to play the power game — very hard,” said Professor Shi Yinhong, an expert in Beijing.

But the costly failure of Kim’s intercontinental missile, the Taepodong 2, after just 42 seconds of flight last Wednesday, was a blow to his prestige and to the force of his deterrent. Six other short and medium-range missiles splashed into the Sea of Japan without making any serious military point.

The United States and its allies are now preoccupied by what Kim might do with the trump card in his arsenal — his stockpile of plutonium for nuclear bombs.

“The real danger is that the North Koreans could sell their plutonium to another rogue state — read Iran — or to terrorists,” said a western diplomat who has served in Pyongyang. American officials fear Iran is negotiating to buy plutonium from North Korea in a move that would confound the international effort to stop Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme.

The prospect of such a sale is “the next big thing”, said a western diplomat involved with the issue. The White House commissioned an intelligence study on the risk last December but drew no firm conclusions.

Plutonium was the element used in the atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945. It would give Iran a rapid route to the bomb as an alternative to the conspicuous process of enriching uranium which is the focus of international concern.

American nuclear scientists estimate North Korea is “highly likely” to have about 43kg and perhaps as much as 53kg of the material. Between 7kg and 9kg are needed for a weapon.

Siegfried Hecker, former head of the US Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, has warned that North Korea’s plutonium would fit into a few suitcases and would be impossible to detect if it were sold.

For the first time since the crisis over its nuclear ambitions began in 1994, North Korea has made enough plutonium to sell a quantity to its ally while keeping sufficient for its own use.

North Korea is known to have sold 1.7 tons of uranium to Libya. It has sold ballistic missiles to Iran since the 1980s. American officials have said Iran is already exchanging missile test data for nuclear technology from Pyongyang. The exchanges probably involve flight monitoring for Scud-type rockets and techniques of uranium centrifuge operation.

Relations deepened between the two surviving regimes in Bush’s “axis of evil” after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s military and scientific links with North Korea have grown rapidly.

Last November western intelligence sources told the German magazine Der Spiegel that a high-ranking Iranian official had travelled to Pyongyang to offer oil and natural gas in exchange for more co-operation on nuclear technology and ballistic missiles. Iran’s foreign ministry denied the report but diplomats in Beijing and Pyongyang believe it was accurate. At the same time evidence emerged through Iranian dissidents in exile that North Korean experts were helping Iran build nuclear-capable missiles in a vast tunnel complex under the Khojir and Bar Jamali mountains near Tehran.

So while one nation, North Korea, boasts of its nuclear weapons and the other, Iran, denies wanting them at all, the world is on edge. If the stakes are high in the nuclear terror game, they are equally high for the balance of power in Asia and thus for global prosperity.

North Korea’s aggressive behaviour and a record of kidnapping Japanese citizens have created new willpower among politicians in Tokyo to strengthen their military forces. To China, Japan’s wartime adversary, that signals a worrying change in the strategic equation. Nationalism in both countries is on the rise. Relations between the two are at their worst for decades.

One scenario is that Japan abandons its pacifist doctrine and becomes a nuclear weapons power. “The Japanese people are very angry and very worried and, right now, they will accept any government plan for the military,” said Tetsuo Maeda, professor of defence studies at Tokyo International University.

The mood favours the ascent of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s hawkish chief cabinet secretary, the man most likely to take over from Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister, who steps down in September. “He will be far more hardline on Pyongyang and I’m firmly of the opinion that he intends to make Japan into a nuclear power,” Maeda said.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

The government is already committed to installing defensive Pac-3 Patriot missiles in co-operation with the Americans. But radical opinion in Japan has been fortified by Kim’s adventures.

“The vast majority of Japanese agree that we need to be able to carry out first strikes,” said Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University.

“I spoke to Mr Abe earlier this week and he shares my opinion that for Japan, the most important step would be for Japan to have an offensive missile capability.”

Such talk causes severe concern to Washington, which has sheltered Japan under the umbrella of its nuclear arsenal since forging a security alliance after the second world war.

Divisions within the Bush administration — which even sympathisers concede have paralysed its nuclear diplomacy towards the North — also served to undermine Japanese confidence in America, as have the well-documented failings of American intelligence.

Dan Goure of the Lexington Institute, a think tank with ties to the Pentagon, says: “There’s no human intelligence in North Korea. Zero. Zippo. It’s like looking at your neighbour’s house with a pair of binoculars — and they’ve got their blinds shut.”

Last week Bush was working the phones to the leaders of China and Russia. But British officials think it unlikely that either will support a Japanese proposal for UN sanctions on the North Koreans.

That leaves the Bush administration with the same unpalatable choices that existed a week, a month or a year ago. The military option, to all practical purposes, does not exist. “An attack is highly unlikely to destroy any existing North Korean nuclear weapons capability,” wrote Phillip Saunders of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, in a paper analysing its risks.

“The biggest problem with military options is preventing North Korean retaliation,” Saunders said. He believes half a million artillery shells an hour would be rained on Seoul in the first day of any conflict from North Korean artillery hidden in caves. The North Koreans could fire 200 mobile rocket launchers and launch up to 600 Scud missiles. American and South Korean casualties, excluding civilians, are projected at between 300,000 and 500,000 in the first 90 days of war.

Like former president Bill Clinton’s team, the Bush administration has therefore realised that a diplomatic answer is the only one available.

But years of inattention, division and mixed messages robbed the US of diplomatic influence. One observer tells of watching the US envoy Christopher Hill sit mutely in an important negotiation because policy arguments in Washington had tied his hands.

Yesterday Hill compromised by offering the North Koreans a private meeting if they came back to nuclear talks hosted by China. But American faith in China’s powers of persuasion may have been misplaced.

“China is the source of the problem, not the source of the solution,” argued Edward Timperlake, a defence official in the Reagan administration and author of Showdown, a new book on the prospect of war with China.

Kim ignored Chinese demands to call off the missile tests and some American officials now think Beijing is simply playing off its client against its superpower rival.

The clearest statement of all came from the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (DPRK) itself. The state news agency said America had used “threats and blackmail” to destroy an agreement to end the dispute. “But for the DPRK’s tremendous deterrent for self-defence, the US would have attacked the DPRK more than once as it had listed it as part of an ‘axis of evil’.”

The lesson of Iraq, the North Koreans said, was now known to everyone.

[Soldier4Christ]

Japan considers strike against N. Korea 
'I think we must send a message that's as clear as possible'

Japan May Postpone North Korea Resolution

 Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on North Korea's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible U.N. Security Council vote on Tokyo's proposal for sanctions against the regime. The vote itself could be delayed for several days, a news agency reported.

China asked Japan to postpone the vote until later this week and Japan is prepared to accept, Kyodo News agency said.

 Japanese officials had earlier vowed to push ahead with a resolution that would impose sanctions on North Korea for its missile tests last week, but said Tokyo would not insist on a Monday vote.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters his government wants a vote on the measure "as soon as possible."

"I think we must send a message that's as clear as possible" to North Korea, he said.

Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.

"If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.

Japan's constitution bars the use of military force in settling international disputes and prohibits Japan from maintaining a military for warfare. Tokyo has interpreted that to mean it can have armed troops to protect itself, allowing the existence of its 240,000-strong Self-Defense Forces.

A Defense Agency spokeswoman, however, said Japan has no offensive weapons such as ballistic missiles that could reach North Korea. Its forces only have ground-to-air missiles and ground-to-vessel missiles, she said on condition of anonymity because of official policy.

Japanese fighter jets and pilots are not capable of carrying out such an attack, a military analyst said.

"Japan's air force is top class in defending the nation's airspace, but attacking another country is almost impossible," said analyst Kazuhisa Ogawa.

"Even if Japan's planes made it to North Korea, they wouldn't make it back ... it would be an act of suicide," he said. "Japan has no capacity to wage war."

Despite resistance from China and Russia, Japan has pushed for the U.N. Security Council resolution, which would bar nations from buying or otherwise receiving missile-related items, materials goods and technology from North Korea.

"It's important for the international community to express a strong will in response to the North Korean missile launches," Abe said. "This resolution is an effective way of expressing that."

China and Russia, both nations with veto power on the council, have voiced opposition to the measure. Kyodo reported Monday, citing unidentified Chinese diplomatic sources, that China may use its veto on the Security Council to block the resolution.

The United States, Britain and France have expressed support for the proposal, while Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso has said there is a possibility that Russia will abstain.

South Korea, not a council member, has not publicly taken a position on the resolution, but on Sunday Seoul rebuked Japan for its outspoken criticism of the tests.

"There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite," a statement from President Roh Moo-hyun's office said, suggesting that Tokyo was contributing to tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Abe said Monday it was "regrettable" that South Korea had accused Japan of overreacting.

"There is no mistake that the missile launch ... is a threat to Japan and the region. It is only natural for Japan to take measures of risk management against such a threat," Abe said.

Meanwhile, a Chinese delegation including the country's top nuclear envoy _ Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei _ arrived Monday in North Korea, officially to attend celebrations marking the 45th anniversary of a friendship treaty between the North and China.

The U.S. is urging Beijing to push its communist ally back into six- party nuclear disarmament talks, but the Chinese government has not said whether Wu would bring up the negotiations. A ministry spokeswoman said last week that China was "making assiduous efforts" in pushing for the talks to resume.

Talks have been deadlocked since November because of a boycott by Pyongyang in protest of a crackdown by Washington on the regime's alleged money-laundering and other financial crimes.

Beijing has suggested an informal gathering of the six nations, which could allow the North to technically stand by its boycott, but at the same time meet with the other five parties _ South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan and Russia. The U.S. has backed the idea and said Washington could meet with the North on the sidelines of such a meeting.

Still, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill questioned just how influential Beijing was with the enigmatic regime.

"I must say the issue of China's influence on DPRK is one that concerns us," Hill told reporters in Tokyo. "China said to the DPRK, 'Don't fire those missiles,' but the DPRK fired them. So I think everybody, especially the Chinese, are a little bit worried about it."

The DPRK refers to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Hill is touring the region to coordinate strategy on North Korea. He has emphasized the need for countries involved to present a united front.

"We want to make it very clear that we all speak in one voice on this provocative action by the North Koreans to launch missiles in all shapes and sizes," Hill said. "We want to make it clear to North Korea that what it did was really unacceptable."

[Shammu]

White House: Clinton-era N. Korea policy a failure
By ASSOCIATED PRESS


The White House belittled former President Bill Clinton's policy of direct engagement with North Korea on Monday, saying efforts to shower North Korean leader Kim Jong Il "with flowers and chocolates" had failed.

White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters that officials in Clinton's Democratic administration went to Pyongyang with offers of light-water nuclear reactors, "a basketball signed by Michael Jordan and many other inducements for the dear leader to try to agree not to develop nuclear weapons _ and it failed."

"We've learned from that mistake."

Officials in President George W. Bush's administration have repeatedly rejected the suggestion that formal discussions might be undertaken with Pyongyang outside of six-nation talks meant to rid the North of its nuclear weapons program. Bush officials insist on speaking with the North at a negotiating forum that includes the Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia. Those talks have been stalled since November.

[Soldier4Christ]

Satellite photos detect activity at NKorea missile bases: report

North Korea could be preparing for new launches of mid-range missiles following last week's tests, with activity detected at its bases, a report has said citing Japanese government sources.

US and Japanese satellite photos show that mid-range Rodong missiles had been set up on launch pads at a base in southeastern North Korea, but were later removed, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported.

Fuel tanks could be seen near the launch pads, the report said.

The report said the satellite photos were taken after last week's tests of seven missiles, but did not give a specific date.

"We think North Korea can launch missiles whenever it wishes," the top-selling daily quoted a government source as saying.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso on Sunday suggested Tokyo would have the right to launch a pre-emptive strike to protect its citizens from a missile launch by Pyongyang.

He said there were "visible signs" of activity at a North Korean missile base from which North Korea launched a Rodong missile last week.

Japan submitted a draft binding resolution in the United Nations Security Council that would impose sanctions on North Korea over the missile tests.

But on Monday, the Security Council put off a vote on the resolution to allow more time for Chinese diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis.

[Soldier4Christ]

North Korea rejects UN resolution; says missile tests to continue at 17:00 on July 15, 2006, EST.

North Korea said Saturday it "totally rejects" a UN resolution imposing sanctions for its recent missile tests and insisted it will continue the launches to bolster its self-defence.

North Korea's UN Ambassador Pak Gil Yon accused the UN Security Council of trying to isolate his country, known officially as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK.

"The delegation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea resolutely condemns the attempt of some countries to misuse the Security Council for the despicable political aim to isolate and put pressure on the DPRK and totally rejects the resolution which was adopted at the current meeting of the Security Council," he said.

The Korean People's Army "will go on with missile launch exercises as part of its efforts to bolster deterrent for self-defence in the future, too," he said.

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Saturday imposing limited sanctions on North Korea for its recent missile tests and demanding it suspend its ballistic-missile program.

The resolution bans all UN member states from selling material or technology for missiles or weapons of mass destruction to North Korea - and it bans all countries from receiving missiles, banned weapons or technology from Pyongyang.

The agreement culminated 10 days of difficult negotiations and was reached after a last-minute compromise among Japan, the United States and Britain - who wanted a tough statement - and Russia and China, who favoured weaker language.

In the final negotiations, the council was divided on one issue: If the resolution should be adopted under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows for the use of military force to make sure the resolution is obeyed.

China had threatened to veto any resolution that mentioned Chapter 7 and in the final compromise it was dropped. The resolution adopted Saturday by a 15-0 vote states that the Security Council was "acting under its special responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security."

Japan, which views itself as a potential target of North Korean missiles, sponsored the initial resolution but it was put to a vote as a presidential text, with the support of all council members.

"The council has acted swiftly and robustly in response to the reckless and condemnable act of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," Japan's Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Chintaro Ito told the council .

The resolution condemns North Korea's multiple missile launches July 5 and demands North Korea "suspend all activities related to its ballistic-missile program."

It also demands Pyongyang re-establish a moratorium on missile-launching.

The Security Council strongly urged North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program which have been stalled since last September.

[Soldier4Christ]

U.S.: N. Korea Must Return to Arms Talks

 Buoyed by a U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning North Korea, the Bush administration said Sunday that the reclusive communist nation will have no choice but to ultimately return to nuclear disarmament talks.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that additional pressure could be brought against North Korea by world powers.

 The White House shrugged off North Korea's rejection of the Security Council's decision.

"It's probably not surprising that they have immediately rejected it," said Dan Bartlett, President Bush's senior counselor. "But sometimes the first response is not the only response or the final response. But what it says is that the world is speaking with one voice."

The Security Council demanded Saturday that North Korea suspend its ballistic missile program. The resolution bans all U.N. member states from selling material or technology for missiles or weapons of mass destruction to North Korea, and from receiving missiles, banned weapons or technology from Pyongyang.

North Korea warned that the resolution was a prelude to a renewed Korean war.

The North also said it would "bolster its war deterrent for self- defense," a typical phrase often used to refer to the country's nuclear weapons program.

"Our republic vehemently denounces and roundly refutes the 'resolution,' a product of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK, and will not be bound to it in the least," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. DPRK is the abbreviation for the North's official name.

Rice, here with Bush for a summit of world leaders, warned that North Korea could face additional action.

"If they do not want to face some of the additional pressures that can be brought to bear on them, then I think that they will eventually realize that they've got to come back to the six-party talks," she said. "That's really the only game in town."

The six-party talks involve China, North and South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States. The talks have been stalled since last September. North Korea has not agreed to return.

Rice praised the Security Council resolution and expressed particular pleasure that China voted for it. China is believed to have more influence on North Korea than any other country and has been reluctant to impose sanctions on North Korea.

She said the six party talks are "really paying off. Because we really now have a coalition."

"I think ultimately North Korea will have no choice but to return to the talks and pursue denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," Rice told reporters.

Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao met Sunday in a villa on the ground of the palace where summit talks are being held and pledged to work together to diffuse crises with North Korea and Iran.

"Both parties expressed their commitment to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula," Hu said.

Hu said they also would work together on a peaceful solution to the nuclear showdown with Iran.

Bush thanked Hu for China's support of the U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea, and for working together on Iran.

Both men said they also discussed economic, trade and other issues.

[Soldier4Christ]

N Korea rejects missile sanctions


North Korea said that it would not be bound by a UN Security Council resolution imposing weapons-related sanctions, and insisted that it would continue to “bolster its war deterrent”.

The resolution condemned missile launches on July 5 and demanded a suspension of all missile activities and a return to talks. “Our republic will bolster its war deterrent for self-defence in every way, by all means and methods, now that the situation has reached the worst phase due to the extremely hostile act of the US,” a North Korean spokesman said .

President Hu of China called for talks to resume. “Both sides expressed their commitment to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” Mr Hu said after meeting President Bush at the G8 summit.

The resolution requires all UN members to prevent imports and exports of any material or funds relating to North Korea’s missile programmes or weapons of mass destruction.

It took the council ten days to agree its response to Pyongyang’s test-firings of seven missiles, including one that could theoretically hit the US.