North Korea’s Arms Are Top U.S. Concern

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told an Asian security meeting Wednesday that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has become the top priority for the United States as it tries to block the spread of the world’s deadliest arms.

Powell pressed the case for tightening the squeeze on Pyongyang during bilateral meetings with major players in the drama that has unfolded since North Korea acknowledged in October that it had a nuclear weapons program.

“With respect to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, no issue is of greater urgency to the U.S. than North Korea’s nuclear weapons program,” Powell told the annual meeting of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations’ regional forum, which is being held this year in Cambodia.

He also told the Asian security forum that its help is “absolutely necessary” to efforts for a diplomatic solution, and he pledged that the United States would make no proposal without the concurrence of its partners.

Virtually every nation at the Asian security meeting, which brings together the 10 members of ASEAN and their 13 Asia- Pacific neighbors, said the region was threatened by North Korea’s weapons programs, U.S. officials said.

“There was a consistent view in the discussion today that in Asia we cannot tolerate nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula,” Powell told a news conference.

One senior American official who was present at the closed-door talks said that North Korean delegate Ho Jong was alone in arguing that the regime of Kim Jong Il needed nuclear weapons.

“No one in the room supported him,” the U.S. official said.

Powell briefly met and shook hands with the North Korean delegate, but it was only a three-minute exchange as lunch was breaking up.

That contrasted with the lengthy exchange last year between Powell and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun. U.S. relations with North Korea have been on a steady decline since.

North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, said Wednesday that the country needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against U.S. aggression.

“We will step up our efforts to strengthen our nuclear deterrent capabilities as a means of self-defense against the United States’ strategy to isolate and stifle” the North, the news agency quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry official as saying.

The North Koreans on Wednesday dashed hopes that they would agree to the U.S. demand to resume negotiations in a multilateral setting that most likely would include Japan, South Korea and China.

“Dialogue and pressure are not compatible,” said the Foreign Ministry official.

After a meeting with Powell in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said that “many difficulties lie ahead” regarding North Korea, and called for all sides to avoid inflammatory action or language.

At the United Nations on Wednesday, the U.S. urged other Security Council members to step up pressure on North Korea to halt its weapons program, but China said it would continue to block any council action.

Frustrated by the delays, the United States moved ahead without China, calling a meeting with the council’s other permanent members -- France, Britain and Russia -- to explore the idea of issuing a statement on North Korea.

The statement, one step shy of a formal resolution, would call on North Korea to stop its pursuit of nuclear weapons and to rejoin the nonproliferation treaty, said John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

The council is not considering sanctions at this point, a measure that North Korea has said it would consider “an act of war.”

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Wright reported from Phnom Penh and Demick from Seoul. Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.