“It would not be a surprise if North Korea reacted to this very tough sanctions regime in a fashion that would be further provocation and further destabilizing,” she said.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said today that it would restart its uranium enrichment program and “weaponize” all the plutonium in its possession, according to the official Korean Central News Agency, the Associated Press reported.
You know, the news coming out of Iran is impressive, but there is another story here that needs equal attention. North Korea has been very active of late, and I highly recommend reading these three stories below to get up to date about what is going on. In essence, North Korea backs out of the armistice signed during the Korean War, they proclaim that they are now enriching Uranium for weapons use (and the UN Security Council votes for sanctions), and we plan on tracking and boarding North Korean ships (which is happening right now-Kang Nam 1 is being tracked) Boy, those are some very significant developments, and NK is threatening to launch a missile towards Hawaii? Keep your eye on this one. –Matt
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NKorea warns of attack, says truce no longer valid
By Simon Martin – May 26, 2009
SEOUL (AFP) — North Korea said Wednesday it was abandoning the truce that ended the Korean war and warned it could launch a military attack on the South, two days after testing an atomic bomb for the second time.
The announcement came amid reports that the secretive North, which outraged the international community with its bomb test Monday, was restarting work to produce more weapons-grade plutonium.
Defying global condemnation, the regime of Kim Jong-Il said it could no longer guarantee the safety of US and South Korean ships off its west coast and that the Korean peninsula was veering back towards war.
The White House said it viewed Pyongyang’s threats as “saber-rattling and bluster” that would only deepen its isolation, with spokesman Robert Gibbs saying that “threats won’t get North Korea the attention it craves.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meanwhile stressed US commitments to defend South Korea and Japan, saying in Washington “that is part of our alliance commitment that we take very seriously.”
The United States still hoped the North would return to multi-party talks on ending its nuclear programme, she added.
In New York, a Western diplomat said that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Japan and South Korea, known as the P5 + 2 were all committed to broadening sanctions against Pyongyang over its latest test.
“There is a clear commitment by the P5 + 2 to go for sanctions,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressing that even Russia and China were on board.
Earlier Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged a strong United Nations resolution to condemn Monday’s nuclear test.
He insisted however that the stand-off with the reclusive state could only be solved through the multi-party talks, saying that North Korea should not be punished “for the sake of punishment” alone.
The North’s latest display of anger was prompted by the South’s decision to join a US-led international security initiative, established after the September 11 attacks to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
“Those who have provoked us will face unimaginable merciless punishment,” said the military statement on the official Korean Central News Agency, blaming Washington and Seoul for the latest turn of events.
It said its military would “no longer be bound” by the 1953 armistice that ended hostilities in the Korean war — in which the United States fought with the South — because Washington had drawn its “puppet” Seoul into the PSI.
With no binding ceasefire, it said, “the Korean peninsula will go back to a state of war.”
It also said the North “will not guarantee the legal status” of five South Korean islands near the disputed inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea, which was the scene of bloody naval clashes in 1999 and 2002.
Analysts played down the likelihood of a full-scale conflict between North and South Korea but said clashes near the sea border were possible.
The North has taken a harder line with the international community in recent months — firing a long-range rocket in April, launching five short-range missiles on Monday and Tuesday and conducting its second nuclear test Monday.
Analysts say Kim Jong-Il, 67, is likely carrying out shows of strength to reassert his control in the impoverished state. He reportedly had a stroke in August, which has renewed questions about who might succeed him.
“Kim is trying to impress the cadres and the elite in general… to convince powerholders that his family is the one that should be ruling the country,” Peter Beck of American University in Washington told AFP on Tuesday.
“It is not unreasonable to conclude that they are no longer interested in nuclear diplomacy,” Beck, a Korea expert, said.
Almost six years of six-nation talks have failed to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy aid, diplomatic benefits and security guarantees.
The international community, including the North’s main ally China, strongly condemned its latest nuclear test.
The Russian foreign ministry said it had summoned Pyongyang’s ambassador and called for the reclusive state to return to the six-party talks.
Meanwhile, South Korean reports said that steam was seen coming from a plant at the North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon — a sign it was trying to produce more plutonium.
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June 17, 2009
U.S. to Confront, Not Board, North Korean Ships
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will order the Navy to hail and request permission to inspect North Korean ships at sea suspected of carrying arms or nuclear technology, but will not board them by force, senior administration officials said Monday.
The new effort to intercept North Korean ships, and track them to their next port, where Washington will press for the inspections they refused at sea, is part of what the officials described as “vigorous enforcement” of the United Nations Security Council resolution approved Friday.
The planned American action stops just short of the forced inspections that North Korea has said that it would regard as an act of war. Still, the administration’s plans, if fully executed, would amount to the most confrontational approach taken by the United States in dealing with North Korea in years, and carries a risk of escalating tensions at a time when North Korea has been carrying out missile and nuclear tests.
In discussing President Obama’s strategy on Monday, administration officials said that the United States would report any ship that refused inspection to the Security Council. While the Navy and American intelligence agencies continued to track the ship, the administration would mount a vigorous diplomatic effort to insist that the inspections be carried out by any country that allowed the vessel into port.
The officials said that they believed that China, once a close cold war ally, would also enforce the new sanctions, which also require countries to refuse to refuel or resupply ships suspected of carrying out arms and nuclear technology.
“China will implement the resolution earnestly,” said Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said.
One official in Washington said the administration was told by their Chinese counterparts that China “would not have signed on to this resolution unless they intended to enforce it.”
The strategy of ordering ships to stop but not provoking military action by boarding them was negotiated among Washington, Beijing and Moscow. It is unclear to what degree South Korea or Japan, at various times bitter adversaries of North Korea, would order their naval forces to join in the effort to intercept suspected shipments at sea, largely because of fears about what would happen if North Korean ships opened fire.
A senior administration official said Monday evening that the United States believed that it already had sufficient intelligence and naval assets in the Sea of Japan to track North Korean ships and flights. The country’s cargo fleet is relatively small, and the North is wary, officials say, of entrusting shipments banned by the United Nations to Panamanian-flagged freighters or those from other countries.
Until now, American interceptions of North Korean ships have been rare. Early in the Bush administration, a shipment of missiles to Yemen was discovered, but the United States permitted the shipment to go through after the Yemenis said they had paid for the missiles and expected delivery. Under the new United Nations resolution, American officials said they now had the authority to seize such shipments.
The senior administration officials outlined Mr. Obama’s approach a day before the president was to meet for the first time on Tuesday with South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, a conservative who has been far more confrontational in his dealings with North Korea than most of his predecessors.
The resolution authorizes nations to seek to stop suspect North Korean shipments on the high seas, but they do not authorize forcible boarding or inspections. “The captains will be confronted,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing a security operation that America’s key allies had only been partially briefed on.
Even if they refused to allow inspections, the official said, “These guys aren’t going to get very far.”
While the captain of a ship may refuse inspection, as the North Koreans almost certainly would, the Obama administration officials noted that most North Korean vessels have limited range and would have to seek out ports in search of fuel and supplies.
American officials believe that previous North Korean shipments of nuclear technology and missiles have gone undetected. The North Koreans were deeply involved in the construction of a reactor in Syria until September 2007, when the reactor was destroyed in an Israeli air raid. But no ships or aircraft carrying parts for that reactor were ever found.
Mr. Obama’s decisions about North Korea stem from a fundamentally different assessment of the North’s intentions than that of previous administrations. Nearly 16 years of on-and-off negotiations — punctuated by major crises in 1994 and 2003 — were based on an assumption that ultimately, the North was willing to give up its nuclear capability.
A review, carried out by the Obama administration during its first month in office, concluded that North Korea had no intention of trading away what it calls its “nuclear deterrent” in return for food, fuel and security guarantees.
Mr. Obama’s aides have said that while the new president is willing to re-engage in either the talks with North Korea and its neighbors, or in direct bilateral discussions, he will not agree to an incremental dismantlement of the North’s nuclear facilities.
“There are ways to do this that are truly irreversible,” said one of Mr. Obama’s aides, declining to be specific.
North Korea is already working to reverse the dismantlement of some of its facilities negotiated in Mr. Bush’s last days in office.
In the weeks ahead of and after its second nuclear test, conducted May 25, North Korea has disavowed its past commitments to give up those weapons, and said it would never bow to the demands of the United States, its allies, or the United Nations. On Saturday the North said that it would reprocess its remaining stockpile of spent nuclear fuel into plutonium, adding to an existing stockpile believed sufficient to make six or eight weapons.
Such announcements have heightened fears that North Korea’s next step could be to sell more of its nuclear or missile technology, one of the few profitable exports of a broken, starving country. The result is that Mr. Obama, in his first year in office, is putting into effect many of the harshest steps against North Korea that were advocated by conservatives in the Bush White House, including Vice President Dick Cheney.
The new approach, officials said, will also exploit elements of the Security Council resolution to try to close down the subsidiaries of North Korean missile makers in China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, where the North has its biggest customers.
Xiyun Yang contributed reporting from Beijing.
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U.N. approves sanctions targeting North Korean ships
The sanctions, unanimously endorsed by the Security Council, seek to rein in Pyongyang’s lucrative arms trade. The U.S. says it is ready to confront suspect vessels at sea.
By Paul Richter
June 13, 2009
Reporting from Washington — The Obama administration is prepared to halt North Korean ships on the high seas to carry out the newest United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang’s arms trade, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said Friday.
Susan Rice said the United States would intensify its scrutiny of North Korea’s trade in banned weapons, and if U.S. commanders suspect a ship is carrying them, “we are prepared to confront that vessel.”
Rice’s comments to reporters at the White House came soon after the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously for new sanctions against North Korea to register its displeasure over Pyongyang’s recent nuclear and missile tests.
Rice said the U.S. Navy wouldn’t forcibly board such ships, but would direct them to a nearby port for inspection. North Korea has warned that it would regard such interdictions as an act of war.
The U.N. sanctions are aimed at halting most of North Korea’s arms business. The measures also authorize tough financial sanctions that could sharply reduce Pyongyang’s revenues from abroad, and call for a halt to foreign financial aid to the isolated nation.
It remains to be seen, however, how vigorously North Korea’s key trading partners, including China, will enforce the sanctions, diplomats said.
Russia and China, North Korea’s traditional protectors, joined in the vote. China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Zhang Yesui, said the resolution showed the “firm opposition” of the international community to Pyongyang’s recent weapons tests.
At the same time, China has opposed a requirement for U.N. members to search North Korean vessels, and the envoy urged nations to use caution in interdictions.
“We strongly urge [North Korea] to honor its commitment to denuclearization, stop any moves that may worsen the situation, and return to the six-party talks” on disarmament, Zhang said.
Rice said the new sanctions were unprecedented and acknowledged that North Korea may react strongly to them.
“It would not be a surprise if North Korea reacted to this very tough sanctions regime in a fashion that would be further provocation and further destabilizing,” she said.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said today that it would restart its uranium enrichment program and “weaponize” all the plutonium in its possession, according to the official Korean Central News Agency, the Associated Press reported.
The U.N. sanctions encourage, but do not require, member countries to interdict North Korean ships they believe to be carrying banned weapons. If the ships refuse permission to be boarded, they are to be directed to a nearby port for inspection.
If they refuse that advice, they are to be denied port services, including refueling.
paul.richter@latimes.com
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