U.S. Tactics in Curbing Arms Spread Debated : Proliferation: The ship episode reveals divisions over how far to go in stopping transfers of missiles or technology.

The furor over the North Korean ship that allegedly delivered a cargo of missiles bound for Iran and Syria has brought out divisions in the U.S. government over how far the United States should go in trying to curb the spread of nuclear or missile technology.

At issue is whether the United States should be willing to take more aggressive steps than it has to challenge countries trying to sell or buy dangerous weapons. That is a question on which State and Defense Department officials disagree, and on which there are differences between the United States and some of its closest allies.

Last week, Bush Administration officials for the first time raised the prospect that they might direct the Navy to board and inspect--though not necessarily divert--another nation’s missile shipment, even if it was legal commerce in international waters. Administration officials “have been trying for a while to think of a way to turn up the heat,” said one source familiar with their thinking.

But other U.S. officials believe that any such action would be seen as an overextension of American power, would unnerve friendly governments and possibly upset ongoing negotiations.

“What are we supposed to do, occupy every country involved in proliferation?” asked one State Department official.

The outcome of this policy debate has major implications for two high priorities in American foreign policy: the Middle East peace process, in which Syria is a principal party, and the U.S. effort to stop North Korea from developing a nuclear bomb.

In the end, the broader questions went unanswered, because the North Korean ship eluded Navy warships tracking it and slipped into the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said Thursday that the ship had left the port and “appears to have off-loaded” its cargo.

But the snafu seemed to leave unsettled the disagreements between Defense and State Department officials over how to handle the problem of weapons proliferation--and, in particular, how to handle two difficult leaders, North Korean President Kim Il Sung and Syrian President Hafez Assad.

State Department officials are said to have strongly opposed the plan to stop and inspect the North Korean freighter, the Dae Hong Ho, which reportedly left home port several weeks ago carrying a cargo of Scud-C missiles. They argued that a confrontation could upset the ongoing, delicate diplomatic efforts aimed at persuading North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program.

“The State Department’s argument is that, if we were to board a (North Korean) ship at this time, that could strengthen the hawks and nationalist elements in North Korea,” says Selig Harrison, a specialist on North Korea at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But, he added, “There’s a widespread view in the Pentagon that the north has no intention of cooperating on the nuclear issue, that we’re wasting our time. . . .”

Separately, the State Department has also been at odds with officials in the Pentagon--as well as specialists on non-proliferation and U.S. supporters of Israel--over what to do about Syrian President Assad’s continuing efforts to obtain new ballistic missiles or missile technology.

“I don’t think we’ve really confronted Assad about the missiles,” complained one Pentagon official. Because Secretary of State James A. Baker III “has his other agenda, the Mideast peace process, he doesn’t want to (irritate) the Syrians,” the official said.

State Department officials counter that Baker has, in fact, urged Assad to stop importing new missiles. Asked this week at a news conference in Brussels about ballistic missile transfers in the Middle East, Baker said the United States has filed diplomatic protests with nations exporting missiles to the Middle East, as well as nations importing them.

Syria has been buying Scud missiles from North Korea at least since 1990, in the months leading up to the Gulf War, when it received new infusions of cash from Saudi Arabia as a reward for its support for the allied coalition against Iraq. Before then, most of Syria’s military equipment had been supplied by the Soviet Union.

For North Korea--which manufactures its own Scuds based on the original design from the former Soviet Union--selling missiles is a way of obtaining foreign exchange, which it sorely needs in the wake of the Soviet breakup.

“There’s no question that the North Koreans will sell anything they have to anybody who has money to pay for it--and about all they have are weapons of mass or considerable destruction, so they’re dangerous people,” Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told reporters a week ago, on the eve of the dispute over the Scud missile shipment.

By most accounts, when Administration officials first publicly threatened to stop the Dae Hong Ho, their hope was to pressure North Korea to turn back the ship before it delivered its cargo. “I think we were trying to scare North Korea into turning around and going home,” says one U.S. official. “We tried rattling our sabers, and we failed.”

When the ship did not turn back, the United States apparently talked to some of its allies about whether it should try to stop the vessel and inspect its cargo. Hiroshi Hirabayashi, deputy chief of mission for the Japanese Embassy in Washington, said his government had been consulted and had not formally objected to a U.S. attempt to interdict the Dae Hong Ho. But he left the impression that Japan--whose oil supplies would be seriously affected by any major disruption of Persian Gulf shipping--was unenthusiastic about the idea.

The United States, Japan and South Korea have worked to persuade North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program. North Korea recently announced that its Parliament will meet next month to approve an agreement allowing regular, international inspections of its nuclear facilities; U.S. officials have been urging North Korea to allow American or South Korean inspections of a plant for reprocessing plutonium.