North Korea accuses United States of plotting war as U.N. nuclear monitors leave country - (This is a deadly serious crisis, and the current administration is not handling it well - or at all for that matter)
sfgate.com
PAUL SHIN, Associated Press Writer Tuesday, December 31, 2002
North Korea accused the United States on Tuesday of planning an invasion and vowed to fight "to the last man," hours after it expelled two U.N. monitors, leaving its feared nuclear program shrouded in secrecy.
At a time when divisions have arisen between South Korea and the United States over how to deal with the North, around 22,000 South Koreans held a New Year's Eve protest near the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, setting of fireworks and holding candles.
The demonstration was called to protest the deaths of two teen-age girls killed by a U.S. military vehicle in a June road accident. But there were also denounciations of Washington's hard line toward Pyongyang. "We oppose U.S. policy that spawns tension on the Korean peninsula," some signs at the rally read.
The South's outgoing president and president-elect both warned on Tuesday that plans being considered by Washington to impose tough economic sanctions on North Korea to force it to give up its nuclear ambitions might not work.
North Korea ordered out the U.N. inspectors after it announced plans to revive its long mothballed nuclear complex at Yongbyon, which experts say could be used to produce nuclear weapons.
Escalating the crisis, North Korea's ambassador to Moscow was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that -- because of U.S. pressure -- Pyongyang could not make good on its commitments under an international treaty designed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
Ambassador Pak Ui Chun said Washington had threatened North Korea "with a pre-emptive nuclear strike," the Interfax news agency reported.
"These conditions also make it impossible for us to abide by the treaty, whose main provision bans nuclear powers from using nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them."
The U.N. inspectors -- a Lebanese man and a Chinese woman -- arrived Tuesday in Beijing after leaving North Korea.
"We cannot comment on anything at this stage," the man said, mobbed by reporters at Beijing's Capital Airport.
An official with the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, said one inspector would remain in Beijing for a few days but the other would return to IAEA headquarters in Vienna on Wednesday.
In Vienna, an IAEA spokeswoman said the expulsion of the inspectors had blinded the "eyes of the world."
"Now we virtually have no possibility to monitor North Korea's nuclear activities nor to provide any assurances to the international community that they are not producing a nuclear weapon," said Melissa Fleming.
Fleming said the expulsions left the agency reliant on satellite imagery.
"It's a position this agency does not like to be in," she said. "We need to be on the ground at the facilities directly, in order to be in a position to verify a given country's nuclear declaration."
U.S. officials said they were considering using heavy economic pressure on the communist North, and North Korea blamed Washington for raising tensions.
"The U.S. is stepping up preparations for a war against (North Korea), persistently turning aside the latter's constructive proposal for concluding a nonaggression treaty," said the North's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
"If the enemy invades even an inch of the inviolable territory of (North Korea), the people's army and people of (North Korea) will wipe out the aggressors to the last man," the report said.
South Korea's President-elect Roh Moo-hyun raised doubts about the U.S. strategy.
"I am skeptical whether so-called `tailored containment' reportedly being considered by the United States is an effective means to control or impose a surrender on North Korea," Roh told reporters.
Roh, who begins a five-year term in February, worries that pressure could backfire and trigger armed conflicts on the world's last Cold War frontier. More than two million troops are massed on both sides of the Korean border.
Instead, he supports outgoing President Kim Dae-jung's "sunshine" policy of engaging North Korea. They believe that dialogue is the only viable way to resolve the North's nuclear issue peacefully.
Roh requested that the United States consult South Korea, a close ally, before forming a new approach in its policy toward North Korea.
The outgoing president, Kim, told Cabinet members said Washington is "by far the most important ally for us," but he also said economic pressure would not necessarily work against the reclusive North, his spokeswoman, Park Sun-sook, said.
South Korean officials are alarmed at signs that North Korea may withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, a move that would drastically escalate the nuclear crisis.
Fleming said the nuclear agency had heard of such concerns but that as of noon Tuesday, North Korea had not declared to the IAEA that it was abandoning the treaty.
In recent weeks, North Korea removed monitoring seals and cameras from the Yongbyon facility, which was frozen under a deal with the United States in 1994.
North Korea says that it is willing resolve concerns over its nuclear program if the United States signs a nonaggression treaty. Washington rules out any talks before the North changes course.
The Koreas were divided in 1945. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice agreement, not in a peace treaty.
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