Devildogg4ever
07-17-03, 05:31 AM
Ex-defense secretary: U.S. ‘losing control’ of N. Korea crisis
By Thomas E. Ricks And Glenn Kessler
THE WASHINGTON POST
July 15 — Former defense secretary William Perry warned that the United States and North Korea are drifting toward war, perhaps as early as this year, in an increasingly dangerous standoff that also could result in terrorists being able to purchase a North Korean nuclear device and plant it in a U.S. city.
“I THINK WE are losing control” of the situation, said Perry, who believes North Korea soon will have enough nuclear warheads to begin exploding them in tests and exporting them to terrorists and other U.S. adversaries. “The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities,” he said in an interview.
Perry added that he reached his conclusions after extensive conversations with senior Bush administration officials, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and senior officials in China.
After weeks of debate, President Bush and his senior foreign policy advisers this week are expected to meet to resolve the administration’s next step in the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear programs. Officials have discussed how sharply to ratchet up the pressure, and how to react to a series of possible North Korean provocations, including nuclear tests.
N. Korea claims it has nuke fuel
Perry is the most prominent member of a growing number of national security experts and Korea specialists who are expressing deep concern about the direction of U.S. policy toward Pyongyang. As President Bill Clinton’s defense secretary, he oversaw preparation for airstrikes on North Korean nuclear facilities in 1994, an attack that was never carried out. He has remained deeply involved in Korean policy issues and is widely respected in national security circles, especially among senior military officers. They credit him with playing a key role in developing the U.S. high-tech arsenal of cruise missiles and stealth aircraft and also with righting the Pentagon after the short, turbulent term of Les Aspin, Clinton’s first defense chief.
Only last winter Perry publicly argued that the North Korea problem was controllable. Now, he said, he has grown to doubt that. “It was manageable six months ago if we did the right things,” he said. “But we haven’t done the right things.”
He added: “I have held off public criticism to this point because I had hoped that the administration was going to act on this problem, and that public criticism might be counterproductive. But time is running out, and each month the problem gets more dangerous.”
PRESSURING THE REGIME
Since the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions erupted last October, when officials in Pyongyang disclosed they had a secret program to enrich uranium, the Bush administration has sought to pressure the regime into giving up its nuclear programs without offering inducements or entering into negotiations. Administration officials — who came into office highly skeptical of the Clinton administration’s 1994 deal that froze North Korea’s nuclear programs — have sought to enlist Japan, South Korea and China to join in isolating North Korea, and have begun laying the groundwork for a maritime campaign to shut down North Korea’s narcotics and weapons smuggling operations.
North Korea has insisted on direct bilateral negotiations with Washington, although officials briefly participated in trilateral talks with China and the United States, and over the months it has taken increasingly provocative steps. It ousted international inspectors, restarted a shuttered nuclear facility and appears to have reprocessed at least a few hundred of 8,000 spent fuel rods that can provide plutonium for weapons. The spent fuel would give North Korea enough nuclear material to build two to three nuclear bombs within a few months, doubling the estimated size of its arsenal.
Last week, North Korean officials told the administration they had completed reprocessing all of the fuel rods — an assertion that U.S. officials have not been able to confirm through available intelligence.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/939149.asp
By Thomas E. Ricks And Glenn Kessler
THE WASHINGTON POST
July 15 — Former defense secretary William Perry warned that the United States and North Korea are drifting toward war, perhaps as early as this year, in an increasingly dangerous standoff that also could result in terrorists being able to purchase a North Korean nuclear device and plant it in a U.S. city.
“I THINK WE are losing control” of the situation, said Perry, who believes North Korea soon will have enough nuclear warheads to begin exploding them in tests and exporting them to terrorists and other U.S. adversaries. “The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities,” he said in an interview.
Perry added that he reached his conclusions after extensive conversations with senior Bush administration officials, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and senior officials in China.
After weeks of debate, President Bush and his senior foreign policy advisers this week are expected to meet to resolve the administration’s next step in the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear programs. Officials have discussed how sharply to ratchet up the pressure, and how to react to a series of possible North Korean provocations, including nuclear tests.
N. Korea claims it has nuke fuel
Perry is the most prominent member of a growing number of national security experts and Korea specialists who are expressing deep concern about the direction of U.S. policy toward Pyongyang. As President Bill Clinton’s defense secretary, he oversaw preparation for airstrikes on North Korean nuclear facilities in 1994, an attack that was never carried out. He has remained deeply involved in Korean policy issues and is widely respected in national security circles, especially among senior military officers. They credit him with playing a key role in developing the U.S. high-tech arsenal of cruise missiles and stealth aircraft and also with righting the Pentagon after the short, turbulent term of Les Aspin, Clinton’s first defense chief.
Only last winter Perry publicly argued that the North Korea problem was controllable. Now, he said, he has grown to doubt that. “It was manageable six months ago if we did the right things,” he said. “But we haven’t done the right things.”
He added: “I have held off public criticism to this point because I had hoped that the administration was going to act on this problem, and that public criticism might be counterproductive. But time is running out, and each month the problem gets more dangerous.”
PRESSURING THE REGIME
Since the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions erupted last October, when officials in Pyongyang disclosed they had a secret program to enrich uranium, the Bush administration has sought to pressure the regime into giving up its nuclear programs without offering inducements or entering into negotiations. Administration officials — who came into office highly skeptical of the Clinton administration’s 1994 deal that froze North Korea’s nuclear programs — have sought to enlist Japan, South Korea and China to join in isolating North Korea, and have begun laying the groundwork for a maritime campaign to shut down North Korea’s narcotics and weapons smuggling operations.
North Korea has insisted on direct bilateral negotiations with Washington, although officials briefly participated in trilateral talks with China and the United States, and over the months it has taken increasingly provocative steps. It ousted international inspectors, restarted a shuttered nuclear facility and appears to have reprocessed at least a few hundred of 8,000 spent fuel rods that can provide plutonium for weapons. The spent fuel would give North Korea enough nuclear material to build two to three nuclear bombs within a few months, doubling the estimated size of its arsenal.
Last week, North Korean officials told the administration they had completed reprocessing all of the fuel rods — an assertion that U.S. officials have not been able to confirm through available intelligence.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/939149.asp