U.S. Tells N. Korea It Can Wage 2 Wars

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration warned North Korea on Thursday that it had “robust plans for any contingencies” and though it has no intention of invading, the U.S. is capable of simultaneous military action there and in Iraq.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he believed a diplomatic solution could be found, and he said the U.S. was telling its allies, including China, that they must share the responsibility for keeping North Korea from producing nuclear weapons.

But Powell, responding to sharp criticism from Senate Democrats, said that although President Bush favors a diplomatic solution to the North Korean crisis, he has not ruled out any options, including military action or sanctions.

Even as they praised Powell for his Iraq presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, and promised to increase the State Department’s budget next year to conduct assertive diplomacy around the world, Senate Democrats lambasted the administration for allowing the North Korean crisis to fester while it focused on Iraq.

“North Korea is a grave threat that seems to grow with each day that passes without high-level engagement,” said Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. “The president should stop downplaying this threat, start paying more attention to it, and immediately engage the North Koreans in direct talks.”

At the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said North Korea’s “saber-rattling” was nothing new, and only hurt its own cause. But he warned that “the United States is very prepared with robust plans for any contingencies.”

The carefully balanced remarks followed two announcements from North Korea on Wednesday, the day of Powell’s presentation, that once again seemed designed to cause maximum anxiety in the United States just when the administration was most preoccupied with Iraq.

First, North Korea said it had restarted its Yongbyon nuclear power plant, which is believed capable of producing enough plutonium for perhaps six bombs within six months. Powell told senators he was not certain that the reactor had in fact begun working, but that in any case, he expected it to be reactivated soon.

Later Wednesday, the North Korean foreign minister was quoted by Britain’s Guardian newspaper as saying that “preemptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the U.S.,” a comment that was interpreted by some as a threat of a first-strike nuclear attack. North Korean invective, always heated, has grown scorching of late, but its rhetoric is often subject to later revision. Nevertheless, Fleischer called the statement “a real concern.”

North Korea’s party newspaper, the Rodong Shinmun, was also reported to have run a commentary warning that “when the U.S. makes a surprise attack on our peaceful nuclear facilities, it will spark off a total war.”

Thursday’s U.S. response was measured under the circumstances, said Kim Joung Won, an analyst with the Seoul-based Sejong Institute. Saying that the U.S. can handle two military conflicts at once, particularly given Pyongyang’s threat that it could launch its own preemptive strike, reaffirms past statements and reflects a contingency that U.S. military planners are considering, he said.

“The U.S. is certainly not baiting North Korea,” Kim said. “If anyone’s doing the baiting, it’s North Korea. This is a very conservative, reasonable U.S. response.”

While the Bush administration clearly wants to downplay the North Korean crisis, analysts said, it’s also walking a fine line. Ignoring North Korea’s incendiary threats, particularly given growing criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, isn’t a viable political option, they said.

Any move by Washington in the direction of military intervention would probably face resistance in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing, however, where engagement is strongly favored over confrontation. Any North Korean missile launch or preemptive strike would quickly change opinions in neighboring countries, however.

Japan’s growing support for Washington’s Iraq policy despite strong antiwar and growing anti-American movements is seen as a necessary trade-off, some say. Tokyo understands that the United States is the only one able to defend Japan should North Korea do something rash, said Hajim Seki, head of the Tokyo-based Toranomon Strategic Institute.

Pyongyang threatened to launch a preemptive strike in 1998, said Nicholas Eberstadt, North Korea expert with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington.

“This is not a new formulation,” he said, “although that doesn’t make it any nicer.”

The escalation in North Korea’s nuclear activities -- which the administration argues is not a crisis -- sparked more pointed questions Thursday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which had grilled Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage on North Korea two days earlier.

“Even now the Bush administration claims the ball is in North Korea’s court,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). “North Korea says it is in our court. From where I sit, the ball is stuck in the net and somebody better go get it.”

And Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) termed the administration’s foreign policy “designed neglect” of urgent issues not just in North Korea but elsewhere because of the exclusive focus on Iraq.

Powell bristled at that characterization, saying U.S. foreign policy is broad and proactive. He defended the administration’s North Korea policy as an important engagement in multilateral problem-solving.

“North Korea is a more direct threat to South Korea and to China and to Russia than anyone else,” Powell said. “Now, those nations are also encouraging us: ‘Quick. Quick. Talk to the North Koreans.’

“And we are prepared to engage with the North Koreans and we’re prepared to talk to them. But what we can’t find ourselves in the position of doing is essentially panicking at their activities and their demands.”

Powell noted that Chinese President Jiang Zemin had said China would not accept the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula. China and other North Korean neighbors must also work at forcing North Korea to comply with international norms, Powell said, noting that “they have a responsibility as well to persuade North Koreans that they have to behave correctly.”

That seemingly mild language was a strong signal to Beijing from an administration that has tried hard to rebuild frayed relations in part by avoiding the appearance of bullying China and working out differences of opinion in private.

Meanwhile, the administration is engaged in a similar diplomatic balancing act with the South Korean president-elect.

For more than a decade, South Korean leaders have insisted that the U.S. not demean them by cutting separate deals with the North Koreans. South Korea was incensed when Washington agreed to a nuclear freeze with Pyongyang in a bilateral negotiation in 1994, a deal that later became the Agreed Framework, and then asked South Korea and Japan to pay for most of it, said Ralph Cossa, head of the CSIS Pacific Forum in Hawaii, a foreign policy research institute.

Now South Korea is urging the U.S. to conduct bilateral negotiations with North Korea, but it is undercutting U.S. leverage by ruling out military force, Cossa argued.

“While no one wants to talk about a preemptive military strike, it should not be ruled out,” Cossa wrote in an e-mail. “Nor should we endorse today’s conventional wisdom that even a limited military action will automatically unleash a holocaust, as Pyongyang endlessly threatens.

“If Pyongyang’s primary objective is regime survival, would it really launch a suicidal attack in response to a limited military action (aimed at destroying its nuclear weapons production capability), knowing that the end result would be the complete destruction of the regime it is desperately trying to preserve?”

*

Times staff writers Janet Hook in Washington and Mark Magnier in Tokyo contributed to this report.