U.S. Downplays Remarks on N. Korea’s Arms Ability

Although intelligence analysts are increasingly concerned that North Korea may be able to arm a missile with a nuclear warhead, U.S. spy agencies have not obtained evidence confirming that Pyongyang has developed that capability, intelligence officials and weapons proliferation experts said Friday.

The officials said assessments of North Korea’s ability to devise a functional nuclear warhead are based largely on projections of its presumed progress toward that goal, not on any significant intelligence discoveries.

For that reason, several officials said, a senior Pentagon intelligence official might have overstated the position of analysts when he told a Senate committee Thursday that the U.S. believed North Korea had the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device.

The assertion by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, appeared to mark the first time a senior government official had declared North Korea capable of making a nuclear warhead.

Pentagon officials sought to lessen the impact of Jacoby’s remarks. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita stressed that there had been “no new assessment” on the North Korean nuclear threat. He also said the United States could not be sure that North Korea had the ability to arm a ballistic missile and hit U.S. targets.

“I don’t believe we know that,” Di Rita said at a news conference, stressing that Jacoby was largely describing theoretical capabilities. Di Rita declined to say whether Jacoby had misspoken.

“His words were what his words were,” Di Rita said.

In a follow-up statement Friday evening, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, “North Korea has a theoretical capability to produce a warhead and mate it with a missile, but we have no information to suggest they have done so.”

Jacoby’s comments alarmed lawmakers and suggested a significant escalation of the North Korean nuclear threat.

His remarks also came at a time when joint diplomatic efforts by China, the United States, Russia, Japan and South Korea to persuade the North to dismantle its nuclear weapons program have stalled.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill sounded a gloomy note on the impasse at a news conference Friday in Seoul.

“The mood as we discuss the progress of these talks is not very good,” he said.

Hill, who has been shuttling among Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo, said he planned to go to Moscow soon.

North Korea has not responded to President Bush’s characterization Thursday of Kim Jong Il as a “tyrant” and a “dangerous person.”

Hill urged Pyongyang, the communist nation’s capital, not to overreact. Bush has “made it very clear we are looking for a diplomatic solution,” he said.

Some government officials in Washington said Jacoby was too categorical when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that U.S. intelligence had assessed that North Korea was capable of putting a nuclear payload on a missile.

“He went beyond what the intelligence community consensus is,” said a government official with access to U.S. assessments on North Korea.

The ability to arm a missile with a nuclear payload “is something you have to worry about and assume they’re working on,” the official said. “But that’s not something you see from overhead imagery. You need other kinds of intelligence to make the determination they’ve actually accomplished that engineering feat.”

Several officials acknowledged that the United States lacked such intelligence.

A U.S. intelligence official indicated that there was no consensus on North Korea’s capabilities, saying there are “differing views on where they are” in developing nuclear warhead technology.

Pyongyang declared in February that it had nuclear weapons.

But the ability to “marry” a nuclear device with a ballistic missile requires significant technological expertise, including “miniaturizing” the device to fit inside a missile tip.

Those technical hurdles are so high that some intelligence officials believe that Pakistan, a country with a demonstrated nuclear arsenal, would have to rely on airplanes rather than missiles to deliver a nuclear strike.

Some experts said Jacoby’s remarks reflected long-held suspicions about North Korea’s nuclear warhead capabilities.

“I think that’s been the assumption for quite some time,” said Robert J. Einhorn, a former assistant secretary of State for nonproliferation who is an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “My guess is this is based on what we know about their missile program, the test we saw seven years ago, and a lot of extrapolation.”

Einhorn was referring to North Korea’s 1998 test of a three-stage missile in which the third stage exploded.

Other experts expressed skepticism that Pyongyang was as far along as Jacoby suggested.

“I think he misspoke,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“North Korea does not have a missile that can reach the United States. There is no compelling evidence that they have a nuclear warhead that can be put on any missile.”

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Times staff writers John Hendren in Washington and Barbara Demick in Seoul contributed to this report.