Powell to Confer With Asian Allies on N. Korea

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is to leave Friday for Japan, China and South Korea to shore up America’s Asian alliances and coordinate strategy for dealing with an increasingly bellicose North Korea.

The trip comes as the U.N. Security Council, deeply divided about Iraq, prepares to take up the question of what to do if North Korea proceeds with its threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and starts building a nuclear arsenal.

The State Department delayed the announcement of the trip until Wednesday as the nation’s chief diplomat weighed whether to stay home to focus on the fight for a second Iraq resolution at the United Nations. With North Korea snubbing a U.S. proposal for talks and threatening to quit the armistice that ended the Korean War, Powell opted to head for Asia.

He will fly first to Tokyo, spend a second night in Beijing, then fly to Seoul to attend the Tuesday inauguration of Roh Moo Hyun, who won the South Korean presidency after a campaign marked by anti-Americanism.

In all three capitals, Powell will probably be seeking support for a Security Council resolution that condemns North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and calls on the isolated communist state to comply with international nuclear norms, sources said.

In his private meetings, Powell is expected to gingerly explore what kind of measures each nation might be prepared to take if North Korea refines plutonium that could be used for nuclear bombs.

Options might include more economic pressure from China; cutting off remittances from ethnic Koreans in Japan to their relatives in North Korea; and redoubling efforts to make sure that dual-use technologies and materials are not sold or smuggled to North Korea, experts said.

Publicly, the Bush administration says it is committed to a diplomatic resolution and does not seek sanctions. The South Korean, Chinese and Russian governments strongly oppose sanctions as ineffective or even counterproductive. Japan, awash in public outrage over past North Korean abductions of its citizens, has been more sympathetic but not openly supportive of the idea.

But some U.S. officials and independent analysts voiced concern that North Korea may have concluded that its nuclear weapons program offers the only real road to security and has no intention of negotiating it away. If so, the allies would be faced with the challenge of restricting North Korea from expanding its weapons program or selling its nuclear materiel.

News leaks from the administration refer to this option as one of “interdiction.”

“That’s another way of saying ‘blockade,’ ” said L. Gordon Flake, head of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs in Washington. “It’s not a Cuban-missile-crisis type of blockade where you line ships up at sea,” but could instead mean stopping ships believed to contain North Korean missiles or nuclear technology.

At U.S. urging, Spanish forces stopped a North Korean vessel headed for Yemen in December. To the Bush administration’s chagrin, the ship was carrying missiles but had to be released because the shipment was perfectly legal. Only if the U.N. were to impose sanctions would such shipments be prohibited.

“Of course at this point in the game, we’re going to claim we’re not pursuing sanctions,” Flake said. But because military options against North Korea are unpalatable, “outside of economic sanctions, there’s not a lot the U.N. Security Council can do. And sanctions alone don’t address the fundamental concerns of the post-9/11 world.”

In Tokyo, Powell’s discussions could include the status of the U.S.-Japanese missile-defense research program. There have been vague reports that North Korea could react to a Security Council condemnation by resuming its missile tests, according to Larry A. Niksch, an Asian affairs specialist at the Congressional Research Service.

“The broader question is, how far are they willing to go with this? Is there a limit?” Niksch said. “If they are actively considering taking advantage of a U.S. war on Iraq to conduct a nuclear breakout and produce nuclear weapons, then I would certainly expect a long-range missile test in addition to North Korea producing plutonium through reprocessing.”

Powell has said he wishes the Chinese would do more to try to persuade the North Koreans to freeze, if not reverse, their nuclear ambitions. The Chinese have insisted that they are against a nuclearized Korean peninsula but have stressed the need for Washington to negotiate directly with North Korea.

While the Bush administration’s priority will be to make sure that Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are in lock-step on North Korea policy, officials are eager to develop a proposal for dealing with North Korea that the Chinese and the Russians will also support.

The State Department did not say whether Powell will meet with incoming President Roh. The two men have never met. Although intermediaries have stressed that Roh is neither as anti-American nor as impulsive in his off-the-cuff remarks as news reports suggest, the Bush administration will have to work hard to establish strong ties with Roh’s inexperienced team -- and make sure that North Korea gets a message of unity.

In a speech to the South Korean Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, Roh said relations with the United States were “excellent,” but he went on to highlight differences with the U.S. in tactics toward North Korea.

“In the U.S. too, there are differences of opinion between hard-liners and others, and there has been no decision as to whether to use force to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program,” Roh said. “Our differences are in this, a tactical issue. We can speak with the same voice as the U.S., but speak differently internationally.”