U.S. Expects New N. Korea Provocations

The United States sees no sign that North Korea is abandoning its nuclear aspirations and expects military provocations to continue, senior diplomatic and military officials said Wednesday.

Tensions rose sharply on the Korean peninsula as North Korea denounced the start of joint U.S.-South Korean war games, which are bringing a U.S. aircraft carrier and stealth fighters planes to the region. Japanese intelligence sources were quoted as saying that North Korea was planning within days to test a medium-range missile that could reach anywhere in Japan.

Weeks of intense diplomatic consultations among China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States have won no promise from the regime in Pyongyang that it won’t reprocess its plutonium stockpiles, Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly said.

“They have been working on nuclear weapons for 20 years, and there is not the slightest sign that they have any interest in stopping,” Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Nevertheless, he said that “we can still achieve, through peaceful diplomacy, a verifiable and irreversible end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.”

Japanese media quoted intelligence sources as saying that North Korea has been moving vehicles and fuel to a missile launching site on its eastern coast, apparently in preparation to test a medium-range Rodong missile. Such a test would be considered a far more belligerent move than two recent tests of short-range, ground-to-ship cruise missiles, according to the Japanese media.

The United States continued to move forces to participate in the annual war games. About 5,000 additional troops are coming for the exercise, according to a U.S. military spokesman.

The aircraft carrier Carl Vinson is expected to arrive in the South Korean port of Pusan this week, while U.S. forces stage a simulated landing on South Korea’s eastern coast. Six F-117A stealth fighters left Holloman Air Force base in New Mexico and were expected Friday at the U.S. air base in Kunsan, South Korea.

Stealth fighters have not participated in the games since 1994, but U.S. officials denied that their presence was intended to send a message to the North Koreans.

“There is nothing new in this,” Ambassador Thomas Hubbard told a group of nervous businesspeople Wednesday at a luncheon sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul. “It takes place every year about this time.”

In recent days, North Korea’s KCNA news agency has made increasingly shrill denunciations of the games.

“The U.S. claims that the exercises are annual events which have nothing to do with the nuclear issue,” the agency said Wednesday. “This is nothing but a broad hoax to mislead the public opinion and cover up its sinister military purpose.”

The top U.S. commanders for the Pacific told the House Armed Services Committee in Washington that they saw no signs that North Korea was preparing for an invasion of the South. However, Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, and Gen. Leon Laporte, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, said they expected small-scale confrontations to continue.

“I would probably say the threat of going to war with North Korea is quite low,” said Fargo, who oversees U.S. military operations in the Asia-Pacific territory, which stretches from Alaska to India.

The greater threat, Laporte and others said, is that miscalculation or poor communications could turn a minor provocation into a major clash with the isolated and unpredictable government of Kim Jong Il.

Kelly said he could not rule out an acceleration of North Korean military activity while the U.S. is preoccupied with Iraq.

“North Korea is hard at work sending us signals, and we can’t exclude that they will do others,” Kelly said. But the commanders said they had no doubt that the U.S. could prevail in simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and North Korea.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the tensions with North Korea combined with the military buildup in Iraq have created the greatest threat to national security in more than half a century.

“I personally believe we’re in the most dangerous period of our history since 1942,” he said.

In recent months, Pyongyang has expelled international nuclear monitors, announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, restarted a nuclear reactor, test-fired two cruise missiles and intercepted a U.S. reconnaissance plane in international airspace.

American reconnaissance flights were suspended 10 days ago after four North Korean MIG fighter jets intercepted the U.S. plane over the Sea of Japan.

Reports have since surfaced that more than one of the North Korean pilots was very aggressive and appeared eager for a confrontation. The four pilots used hand gestures to signal the U.S. pilot to land in North Korea.

“The actions of the crews, including hand gestures, suggested that this was a coordinated, well-planned attempt to try to force our aircraft to divert and make a landing in North Korea,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

Officials said Wednesday that the U.S. reconnaissance planes would resume flights but that the planes would be watched over by AWACS radar surveillance planes and high-tech U.S. Navy warships.

President Bush and top U.S. officials have said they are seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program. During a recent trip to Asia, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said diplomatic initiatives by Japan and China aimed at resolving the standoff were underway.

As time goes on, criticism from Congress and foreign policy experts of the Bush administration’s approach -- or inaction -- has mounted.

The experts, as well as lawmakers including Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), have been urging the administration to attempt to bring North Korea to the negotiating table with a promise not to attack or to seek sanctions as long as talks are underway. In return, they say, the U.S. should insist that North Korea agree to a verifiable freeze on all of its nuclear activities.

Responding to questions from Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), Kelly shot down that proposal, saying that now that North Korea has kicked out inspectors, the U.S. would be unable to verify a freeze.

Kelly said it would take time to realize the administration’s policy of seeking a broad, regional solution that will address the interests of North Korea’s neighbors and also make them accept some responsibility for it.

“All of those countries at the moment would be very happy if the U.S. made this problem go away,” Kelly said. However, he added, “All of us have to convince the North Koreans it is they who have to make the choice” between keeping a nuclear weapons program and being accepted by the world community.

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Efron and Hendren reported from Washington and Demick from Seoul.