U.S. Planning Sanctions Against North Korea

By JAMES DAO


WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 ?- The Bush administration is developing plans for sanctions against North Korea, that would include halting its weapons shipments and cutting off money sent there by Koreans living in Japan, in the event that North Korea continues its march toward developing nuclear weapons, senior administration officials say.

The officials said late last week the administration had no plans to push for the sanctions soon, since the United States' Pacific allies still oppose the idea and the United Nations Security Council is likely to remain focused on Iraq for weeks.

But the Pentagon and State Department are developing detailed plans for sanctions, and perhaps other actions, so that the United States has a forceful response ready in case North Korea takes aggressive new steps toward developing nuclear weapons, senior officials said.

Many administration officials believe that it is just a matter of time before North Korea resumes testing long-range missiles, for example, or starts reprocessing nuclear fuel for weapons production. Many officials also worry that if the United States attacks Iraq, North Korea will use the opportunity to push forward with weapons production.

"If they start to dismantle their weapons programs, then we can talk about incentives," a senior administration official said. "But if they torque up the pressure, you're looking at the other direction. That's when sanctions become much more likely."

The officials said the possibility of sanctions would be part of a broader diplomatic campaign intended to get North Korea to step back from its nuclear programs. The first step will be to urge the Security Council, perhaps in the next two weeks, to condemn North Korea's recent steps toward nuclear weaponry, which have included withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarting a mothballed reactor at Yongbyon that can produce weapons-grade plutonium.

The United States will also continue pressing Russia and China, major trading partners and providers of foreign aid to North Korea, to take a more active role in pressuring North Korea to dismantle its programs, the officials said.

Both countries have said they will not support sanctions yet, contending that less confrontational approaches should be given more time. North Korea has said it would consider sanctions an act of war.

Precisely because Russia and China, as well as South Korea and Japan, have been unwilling to support cutting off trade with North Korea, the United States is looking at more tailored sanctions that will focus on banned activities like smuggling drugs or proliferating weapons of mass destruction, officials said.

For instance, Pentagon planners are looking closely at using American military forces to stop, turn back or seize ships and aircraft from North Korea that are suspected of carrying missiles or nuclear weapons materials, officials said. The sale of missile technology to Iran, Iraq and other countries has been a major source of foreign currency for the impoverished North Korea, American officials contend.

In December, Spanish warships working with American military and intelligence officials stopped a North Korean freighter that was found to be carrying 15 Scud missiles bound for Yemen.

But the Bush administration, at the urging of Yemen's government, determined that it had no legal right to seize the cargo and ordered the freighter released.

To prevent a similar situation, administration officials say that they will need Security Council authorization to seize or turn back weapons shipments from North Korea.

At a Senate hearing last week, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld hinted at that strategy, advocating revamping international rules to allow steps to halt North Korea's weapons exports and calling North Korea "the world's greatest proliferator of missile technology" and a threat for selling fissile material to terrorists or rogue nations.

"I see North Korea as a threat as a proliferator more than I see them as a nuclear threat on the peninsula," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Unless the world wakes up and says this is a dangerous thing and creates a set of regimes that will in fact get cooperation to stop those weapons, we're going to be facing a very serious situation in the next five years."

The sanctions package would also probably include measures intended to cut off remittances to North Korea from Korean-owned gambling parlors in Japan and allow the interdiction of drug trafficking from North Korea. North Korean groups, some linked to the government, run a thriving trade in illegal methamphetamines in northern Asia, Western officials say.

American officials contend that profits from those ventures support North Korea's military and enrich its Communist Party leaders. Constricting them, they contend, will not worsen the already dire plight of North Korea's general population, which has suffered through years of famine.

But the administration is also contemplating measures that could affect North Korean civilians. It is, for instance, likely to reduce American food shipments to North Korea this year from last year's total of 230,000 tons. The administration, which had been among the largest providers of food and fuel to North Korea, last year cut off shipments of heavy fuel oil to North Korea after learning that it had a covert nuclear weapons program.

The administration contends it will not use food aid for political purposes. But officials said last week that food aid to North Korea would almost certainly decline this year for three reasons: the World Food Program, which runs an aid distribution network in North Korea, is requesting less food this year; the United States has concerns that American food is feeding soldiers instead of civilians; and the great demand for American aid in other countries.

But Democratic officials and some aid groups assert that the assistance is being reduced to ratchet up pressure on the North Korean government.

Some Korean experts and hawkish lawmakers in Congress are also urging the administration to press China to reduce aid to North Korea until it begins dismantling its weapons programs. China provides well over half of North Korea's food and fuel imports and is widely thought by American officials to have the most leverage over North Korea.

James R. Lilley, a former ambassador to South Korea and China, said the Chinese remained deeply ambivalent about squeezing North Korea, fearful that it will collapse and send millions of impoverished refugees into northeastern China.

But he also noted that the Chinese were concerned about North Korea's nuclear programs and had been willing at least twice in the past decade to reduce food and fuel shipments to North Korea in apparent efforts to pressure North Korea to freeze its weapons programs.

"The Chinese are coming on board," Mr. Lilley said. "But you've got to get high-level summitry to kick start it."

Such high-level diplomacy could begin in April, when Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to visit Beijing to discuss North Korea, administration officials said.

Despite the administration's efforts to devise more forceful approaches to North Korea, many Democrats contend that the administration still lacks a clear and coherent policy. They contend that sanctions will only work in conjunction with a more aggressive effort by the United States to open direct talks with North Korea. The administration has resisted one-on-one talks, saying it wants to meet North Korea in a multilateral setting.

"Direct talks are an indispensable ingredient of a solution here," said Ashton B. Carter, a former Pentagon official who is now a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "The issue is only when and what to say. Once we figure that out, we can begin the experiment of seeing whether or not North Korea can be talked out of going nuclear."

U.S. Planning Sanctions Against North Korea