North Korea Atomic Issue Sent to U.N. : Diplomacy: Inspection agency seeks Security Council action on dispute. U.S. says it will send Patriots to S. Korea and resume military exercises.

With its inspections of North Korean nuclear facilities thwarted, the International Atomic Energy Agency moved Monday to ask the U.N. Security Council to help resolve its dispute with the Pyongyang regime.

It was the first time in almost a year of tangled diplomacy that the international agency felt compelled to seek Security Council action against North Korea.

Although the council could eventually impose economic sanctions against Pyongyang, most analysts believe that it will not do so immediately--partly because China, a permanent member with veto power over council resolutions, has said it is not yet ready to support sanctions.

“The main thing is that (the IAEA) has now passed the ball to the Security Council,” one Clinton Administration official said Monday night. “We’re on completely new territory now. This will be a precedential case as to how the Security Council responds.”

At the same time, the Clinton Administration took steps Monday to shift its confrontation with North Korea from a diplomatic approach to a military one. The Pentagon announced it is sending a battalion of Patriot missiles to South Korea and laying the groundwork to resume the massive “Team Spirit” military exercises with South Korean forces later this year.

A Patriot missile battalion has from three to six batteries of missiles. Each battery has eight launchers; each launcher carries four missiles. The Pentagon said the Patriot battalion will arrive in South Korea in 30 to 35 days, along with 850 soldiers from Ft. Bliss, Tex., who will operate and maintain the batteries.

Both the IAEA and the Administration were responding to recent intransigence by North Korea. In the last few days, the regime of President Kim Il Sung has prevented the IAEA from finishing a round of inspections of North Korea’s nuclear facilities. Over the weekend, Pyongyang’s delegate walked out of talks with South Korea, threatening to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire.”

The IAEA is the organization responsible for checking nuclear facilities, including reactors and reprocessing plants, to ensure they are used for peaceful purposes of energy production rather than to produce the fuel for nuclear weapons.

At a meeting Monday in Vienna, the agency adopted a resolution somewhat milder than had been anticipated. Instead of washing its hands of the issue completely, the IAEA gave North Korea one more chance to go along with inspections of its facilities. But it formally referred the issue to the Security Council, the first step toward involving the council in the dispute.

Experts say chances are that the council will start with a resolution simply condemning North Korea.

“Frankly, it is more important that a (Security Council) resolution show North Korea that it is completely isolated than that it call for immediate sanctions,” said Arnold Kanter of the RAND Corp. “Building a coalition is more important than (trying for) a resolution which calls for sanctions, which, right now, everyone else is opposed to. That would be shooting ourselves in the foot.”

An Administration official said Security Council members will probably have informal discussions on North Korea this week and may then try to adopt some form of resolution or statement next week.

At first, U.S. officials say, the council might approve some weakly worded statement that simply urges North Korea to drop its resistance and let IAEA inspectors finish their work at the nuclear installations. Administration officials hope that China will go along with such a statement. They were encouraged Monday that the Chinese delegation in Vienna did not veto Monday’s IAEA resolution, choosing instead to abstain.

The next step envisioned by the Administration would be a Security Council resolution that, in effect, calls on the Pyongyang regime to comply with inspections “or else.” The last step would be some move toward U.N. economic sanctions.

Such a process could take months. During that time, the Pentagon will apparently step up pressure on North Korea. Besides the Patriots and Team Spirit exercises, some experts have said the United States could increase its troop presence in South Korea and hold a naval exercise in waters near North Korea.

U.S. military commanders have said they want the Patriots brought to South Korea now, primarily for reasons of convenience and logistics: At the moment, they can be brought in routinely by sea. By contrast, if the Patriots were needed on an emergency basis after or just before the outbreak of war, the missiles would have to be sent to South Korea by air, taking up airlift space that could otherwise be used for other equipment and personnel.

Still, some specialists say the Patriots’ dispatch is primarily symbolic. Through this small action, they say, Clinton could satisfy those in the United States who seek tougher policies, while the Administration quietly continues to work toward a diplomatic solution.

“These are just things that give political cover to President Clinton” and South Korean President Kim Young Sam, said Selig Harrison, a North Korea specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If (Clinton) is prepared to go to negotiations with North Korea, then he needs some political cover.”

Pentagon officials said Monday that the joint U.S.-South Korean Team Spirit military exercises will now probably take place around September. The exercises had once been tentatively scheduled for this month but were put off when North Korea agreed to let in IAEA inspectors.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to carry out Team Spirit exercises in the spring or summer, while rice is being planted and cultivated in many areas of South Korea. So whether intentionally or not, North Korea’s decision to first admit the IAEA inspectors, then to bar them from completing their work, succeeded in stopping Team Spirit for about six months.

U.S. officials said Monday that they are unsure what prompted North Korea to dig in its heels over the last week and to stop cooperating with the international inspections. “One explanation is that they are hiding something” in their nuclear sites, a State Department official said. “Another is that this is part of North Korea’s political tactics, seeking to put pressure upon the United States and South Korea” in negotiations over political and economic help for Pyongyang.

Harrison, who has visited Pyongyang several times and is one of the strongest supporters in Washington of a conciliatory approach toward North Korea, suggested that the latest tactic is merely a negotiating ploy. North Korean officials “don’t want to give everything to us before they have a negotiation,” he asserted. “They are just behaving in their usual and exasperating way.”

The United States has said it is prepared to talk about an improvement in ties with North Korea and economic help for Pyongyang at a new round of talks, which would begin after the IAEA completes its inspections. North Korea apparently believes that it has already cooperated sufficiently with the IAEA and that it is entitled to the new round of negotiations now.

Times staff writer Art Pine also contributed to this report.