Posted on 27-12-2002
U.S.
Gets Warning From North Korea
By Howard W. French
SEOUL, South Korea, NYT, Dec. 24 — North Korea warned today of an "uncontrollable catastrophe" unless the United States agrees to a negotiated solution to a tense standoff over its nuclear energy and weapons programs.
The statement, made amid mounting tensions with the United States, came as a stiff pre-emptive rebuff to a conciliation-minded newly elected president in South Korea, and a warning to other countries that their efforts to mediate the crisis will be futile. "There is no need for any third party to meddle in the nuclear issue on the peninsula," said North Korea's ruling-party newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun. Referring to the North Korean government by its Korean initials, the paper said: "The issue should be settled between the DPRK and the U.S., the parties responsible for it. If the U.S. persistently tries to internationalize the pending issue between the DPRK and the U.S. in a bid to flee from its responsibility, it will push the situation to an uncontrollable catastrophe."
The North Korean defense minister, Kim Il Chol, went further, warning of "merciless punishment" to the United States if it pursued a confrontational approach to the emerging nuclear crisis. "The U.S. hawks are arrogant enough to groundlessly claim that North Korea has pushed ahead with a `nuclear program,' bringing its hostile policy toward the DPRK to an extremely dangerous phase," the state-run Korean Central News Agency quoted Mr. Kim as saying. Some analysts here saw the defense minister's statement as a defiant response to comments by his American counterpart, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said on Monday that the United States had enough military power to prevail over North Korea even if such a conflict occurred during a war with Iraq.
The North's incendiary comments came as Pyongyang accelerated its takeover of nuclear fuel and reactors placed under international surveillance under a 1994 agreement with the United States. That pact, known as the Agreed Framework, was forged after a standoff remarkably similar to the current one.
Today, South Korean officials said North Korea had begun taking steps to reactivate a five-megawatt nuclear reactor that had been mothballed under the agreement. North Korea completed the removal of the last International Atomic Energy Agency seals and disabling surveillance cameras at a fuel fabrication plant in Yongbyon, South Korean officials said on Tuesday. The facility is known technically as a "research reactor," but Western arms control experts say its true purpose is to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. "There are varying estimates on how long it would take them to reprocess the spent fuel, but they probably have plans to do it a lot faster than outsiders imagine — and will do so if their equipment works," said an American official who has studied North Korea's nuclear programs for years. "Here are a few of the ugly signposts we might whiz past: asking the inspectors to leave, starting up the reprocessing line, finalizing their withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty and declaring themselves a nuclear power with a `Korean bomb' intended to protect the whole of the Korean people by keeping the Americans from starting a war."
Reflecting the sharp increase in distrust between the United States and South Korea amid a series of major demonstrations against the presence of 37,000 American troops in the country, the official added, "This will cause some secret shivers of pride amongst some in the South."
Both South Korea's outgoing president, Kim Dae Jung, and the man who will succeed him in February, Roh Moo Hyun, spent most of the day struggling to contain the crisis, which threatens to nullify the engagement policies they embrace. "South Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Russia and the European Union are all strongly calling on North Korea to abandon the nuclear program, but the North is not listening now," Mr. Kim said during a cabinet meeting
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