N. Korea Issue to Go to U.N. Council

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency officially found North Korea in breach of its nonproliferation commitments Wednesday, as U.S. intelligence officials told Congress that a still-untested North Korean missile could carry a small nuclear warhead to the West Coast.

After weeks of behind-the-scenes talks, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to send the issue of North Korea’s nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council and asked the council for “urgent” action.

It is unclear what immediate action the council might take. The U.S. has said it is not interested in immediately seeking sanctions against North Korea -- a move that the regime in Pyongyang has said would be tantamount to a declaration of war. But U.S. officials hope that moving the dispute to the Security Council will bring greater international pressure on Pyongyang, which has been demanding one-on-one negotiations with the U.S. even while taking steps that could result in the production of half a dozen new nuclear weapons.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CIA Director George J. Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby acknowledged that the North Koreans could hit the western United States with a nuclear warhead if they used a three-stage version of the Taepodong 2 missile.

“Yes, they could do that,” Tenet said in response to a lawmaker’s question, adding that Pyongyang is also believed to have one or two nuclear bombs. Jacoby, however, noted that the missile has not undergone the kind of testing that is usually required before the weapons are considered ready for deployment.

At the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said, “We do have concerns about North Korea’s missile development programs.”

The possibility of such a nuclear strike has been asserted in U.S. intelligence reports since the late 1990s. In the 2001 National Intelligence Estimate, the intelligence community pointed out that a three-stage Taepodong could deliver a payload weighing several hundred pounds about 9,000 miles, sufficient to hit any part of North America.

Some experts on nuclear proliferation said the missiles are rudimentary and highly inaccurate, adding that the officials’ statements Wednesday make their capability appear far greater than it may actually be.

The intelligence officials “were putting out the worst-case scenario,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He said the missiles were so inaccurate that “if they aimed for the United States, they might hit South America.”

It also was not clear, he said, that the North Koreans have been able to miniaturize their nuclear bombs to the point where they could be carried atop such a missile. First-generation nuclear arms usually weigh about 1,100 pounds, more than the Taepodong 2 might be able to carry, he said.

But L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs in Washington, said the testimony could have a far-reaching effect if it further alarms the North Koreans about U.S. intentions.

“The key to this is how it’s interpreted in Pyongyang and what it leads them to do,” he said. “It’s just a factual statement, but they could view it as highly inflammatory.”

Some experts have speculated that the North Koreans may have been motivated to resume their nuclear program in part because of the harsh statements of Bush administration officials. President Bush included the Stalinist regime in his “axis of evil” -- alongside Iraq and Iran -- and has said that he “loathes” North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

On the diplomatic front, there were signs Wednesday that China is responding to U.S. pressure to take a greater role in getting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.

A senior State Department official said that after insisting for weeks that it could do little more to sway North Korea, Beijing had become “a little bit energized” in recent days. In a sign of the new attitude, Chinese officials supported the action by the IAEA’s governing board and have also been talking with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on North Korea, officials said.

China is North Korea’s closest ally and largest source of outside aid, and U.S. officials consider Beijing key in solving the dispute.

In South Korea, the Foreign Ministry said today that the IAEA move was “an appropriate measure.... We hope that North Korea will take positive steps and utilize this window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution.”

Even as the IAEA took its action Wednesday, U.S. and U.N. officials emphasized that they don’t intend to seek sanctions against North Korea in the near future.

Many U.N. members, including China and Russia, have argued that sanctions would be counterproductive. In fact, Russia abstained from voting for the IAEA action, and its representative said, “We consider the sending of this question to the United Nations Security Council to be premature and counterproductive.”

Nevertheless, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei warned that North Korea’s decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restart its nuclear program “sets a dangerous precedent.”

And the United States and other countries are counting on the show of unity in the IAEA governing board’s vote to convince North Korea that it must negotiate with its neighbors to find a solution.

“The North Koreans, despite all their prickliness, do understand consistent messages,” said a Western diplomat involved in Wednesday’s decision. “It is important for the rest of the international community to keep repeating that this is a multilateral matter and to give very steady indication of truly global consensus that the North Koreans can’t just have business as usual.”

But other diplomats were less sanguine. “Every time we deplore something North Korea does, they up the ante,” said a U.N. official close to the process.

U.S. officials have been in no apparent hurry to settle the North Korea crisis because of their preoccupation with efforts to disarm or topple the Iraqi regime.

But one senior official indicated that the Bush administration might someday consider tough steps against Pyongyang. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that although the administration is not considering sanctions at the moment, “it is an option that’s on the table.”

“If there were sanctions, for example, that precluded any imports or exports of military goods, that cut off all outside remittances, that shut down the drug trafficking, you would put a substantial crimp in the regime’s hard-currency earnings,” the official said, referring to allegations that North Korea has trafficked in heroin and methamphetamines. “And I think you would have a destabilizing effect, and certainly you’d go a long way toward stopping their proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, which in and of itself would be good.”

Discussions are underway among U.N. members about how to put together a response that includes economic and humanitarian aid to reward North Korea for coming into compliance.

One idea under discussion calls for the creation of an umbrella group of countries that would work out the package and proposes that the Security Council be the forum for putting it forward. The group would include the five permanent Security Council members, the European Union, North and South Korea, Japan and Australia.

ElBaradei said that although most parts of such a package would be multilateral, the piece involving guarantees of nonaggression toward North Korea might be bilateral, involving Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea has said it fears that the United States will take preemptive military action against it.

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Rubin reported from Jerusalem and Richter from Washington. Times staff writer Sonni Efron in Washington contributed to this report.