Aspin Downplays Crisis Over N. Korea Arms : Asia: Defense secretary emphasizes that the Pyongyang regime is not developing new nuclear capabilities.

Secretary of Defense Les Aspin sought repeatedly Sunday to defuse the sense of crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, apparently trying to win more time and breathing room for the United States to work out a settlement with the Pyongyang regime.

In a television appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Aspin went out of his way to emphasize that for the moment, the Pyongyang regime is not developing any new nuclear capabilities. He also cautioned that North Korea’s troop deployments near South Korea, while dangerous, have not changed and are no more threatening now than they have been in the past.

On both of these issues, the defense secretary interrupted questioners to make points they had not raised, as though he was determined to get across a less alarming picture of developments in North Korea.

“Whatever happened in 1989, the situation is not deteriorating now,” Aspin said. “They (the North Koreans) are not developing more plutonium in order to be able to make more nuclear weapons.”

On other issues Sunday, the defense secretary:

* Said that 2,500 of the 8,200 American troops in Somalia will be out of the country before Christmas and that the rest of the forces will be withdrawn by March 31, as Administration officials had earlier promised.

* Opposed the idea of clemency for Jonathan Pollard, who is now in jail for spying for Israel but has asked President Clinton to commute his sentence of life imprisonment. “I looked at the issue, and I thought that the evidence was pretty strong that he was put away for pretty heinous crimes,” Aspin said.

* Blamed Leon E. Panetta, director of the Office of Management and Budget, for airing in public an internal Administration dispute over a Defense Department request for an additional $50 billion in funding.

Over the last few weeks, U.S. and North Korean diplomats have met several times in New York in an attempt to work out some arrangement for international inspections of North Korea’s nuclear installations. The Clinton Administration has indicated that if the Pyongyang regime permits these inspections, the United States would be willing to talk about normalization of relations and possible economic help for North Korea.

Aspin or his top aides contributed to the growing sense of crisis over North Korea early last month when an unnamed senior U.S. defense official traveling on Aspin’s plane was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying that North Korea had massed 70% of its forces close to the border with South Korea.

Many defense and intelligence experts have said this statement was misleading and alarming, because they say the military situation and deployments inside North Korea have not significantly changed. North Korea has had 70% of its forces deployed in forward positions near South Korea for at least five years, and perhaps as many as 10 years, experts have said.

During his television appearance Sunday, Aspin said the situation along the border between North and South Korea “is no more dangerous now than it was, say, three months ago or five months ago or 10 months ago. . . . North Korea, a small country, devotes an incredible amount of its resources to defense expenditures, and it has got this equipment very far forward deployed.”

The other factor underlying the growing sense of urgency is the fact that North Korea has repeatedly stalled in permitting inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit its nuclear plants--or even to change batteries, film and seals on monitoring devices already inside these installations.

The Clinton Administration and the IAEA had originally set a deadline of the end of September for North Korea to open up for these inspections. That date passed, and so did another deadline at the beginning of November, without any change in North Korea’s position.

IAEA Director General Hans Blix has said that if North Korea does not permit inspections soon, perhaps by the end of this month, the IAEA will have to declare formally that it is possible that North Korea is diverting fuel for possible use in nuclear weapons. U.S. officials have said North Korea already obtained enough material for at least one nuclear weapon during a period when its Yongbyon nuclear plant was closed down in 1989.

But Aspin said Sunday that U.S. officials, through intelligence collection, are certain that North Korea has not yet diverted any additional material for weapons. “We are confident that the situation in Korea is not, at least, getting worse, as far as building nuclear bombs is concerned,” he said.

In assessing his first year as defense secretary, Aspin said his biggest mistake was not giving sufficient armor to American forces in Somalia. Subsequently, 18 U.S. soldiers were killed during a firefight Oct. 3.