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