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Nuclear chill as Pyongyang warns US

By David Stout in Washington and Howard French in Seoul
December 26 2002

North Korea has accused the United States of risking a nuclear war, while Washington is warning it is "perfectly capable" of taking military action against the communist regime and Iraq at the same time.

Vowing to fight the US to the end if provoked, North Korea says the US will be to blame for an "uncontrollable catastrophe" unless it agrees to a negotiated solution to the stand-off over its nuclear energy and weapons program.

The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said in Washington that North Korea should not feel emboldened because of the US focus on Iraq and the campaign against terrorism.

"If they do, it would be a mistake," he said. "We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts. We're capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other. And let there be no doubt about it."

Following Mr Rumsfeld's threat, North Korea accused US hard-liners of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, adding that its armed forces were up to the task of beating any enemy.

The chill in relations follows North Korea signalling it might be reviving its nuclear reactor program.

While Pyongyang insists this is for electricity, a US Government official said the regime could churn out enough plutonium to build up to 50 to 55 nuclear weapons a year if all three of its frozen nuclear reactors entered operation in coming years.

US alarm was heightened over the weekend, when North Korea said it had removed monitoring equipment installed more than eight years ago to make sure it did not use plutonium stockpiles to produce nuclear weapons.

It also said it was removing monitors from a nuclear reactor, leaving the rest of the world guessing about what is being done with 8000 nuclear fuel containers stored there - enough plutonium to build half a dozen nuclear weapons within several months, arms control experts say.

The North Korean Defence Minister, Kim Il-chol, stepped up the anti-US rhetoric. "If they, ignorant of their rival, dare provoke a nuclear war, the army and people of [North Korea] led by Kim Jong-il, the invincible commander, will rise up to mete out determined and merciless punishment to the US imperialist aggressors with the might of single-hearted unity more powerful than an A-bomb," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted him as saying.

Mr Rumsfeld had earlier sought to dispel speculation about a possible conflict with North Korea.

Asked on Monday whether there was "a military option on the table" for preventing North Korea from manufacturing nuclear weapons, he declined to respond directly, saying the Defence Department prepares for "a whole host of contingencies".

He said the Administration views diplomacy as its best response, but stressed it is prepared to wage war.

South Korean officials said North Korea had finished removing the last International Atomic Energy Agency equipment at the fuel fabrication plant in Yongbyon. The agency's director-general, Mohammed ElBaradei, told CNN that if the true purpose of the plant is to produce plutonium for weapons, it would be able to do so "in a pretty few months. And that's a pretty disturbing intent."

The New York Times, The Washington Post and agencies




- Nuclear chill as Pyongyang warns US
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