UN: After months grappling with Iraq, the UN Security Council is now set to become embroiled in the simmering crisis over the North Korea, which has escalated dangerously in recent days, writes Conor O'Clery.
US officials are expected to ask the Security Council before the end of the month to condemn the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for restarting its nuclear weapons programme.
Much more ominously however, US officials are preparing to ask the council to agree to sanctions against Pyongyang - a move which the North Koreans have said would be taken as a declaration of war.
Washington is drawing up plans for a naval blockade of North Korea to seize or turn back ships suspected of carrying missiles or nuclear weapon materials, US officials told the New York Times. They would also target payments from Koreans living in Japan, a major source of hard currency for the impoverished Stalinist country.
As it increases the diplomatic pressure on North Korea by making such plans known, Washington has also announced that it will conduct joint war games with South Korea from March 4th to April 2nd.
Pyongyang has meanwhile stepped up its bellicose rhetoric against the US.
"Victory in a nuclear conflict will be ours and the red flag of army-first politics will flutter ever more vigorously," DPRK state radio said yesterday.
The Bush administration closed the door to direct talks with Pyongyang at the weekend as it prepared for a diplomatic drive to get North Korea to reverse its weapons programmes.
President Bush's National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, said that the nuclear crisis must be settled through international diplomacy.
"I know that the North Koreans would like nothing better than this to become a bilateral problem between the United States and North Korea," she said. "But we cannot allow the North Koreans to step back into a bilateral discussion with the United States."
Washington is expected to urge the Security Council in the next two weeks to condemn North Korea's withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and its moves to restart a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which would have the potential to produce weapons grade plutonium.
As in the crisis over Iraq, the US will face resistance to sanctions from two other permanent members of the council, Russia and China, which share common borders with North Korea and favour a less confrontational approach.
By announcing plans, however tentative, to impose a blockade on North Korea, Washington has upped the stakes dramatically in the crisis, which has been building since October when the US accused the DPRK of running a secret uranium-enrichment programme and then cut off fuel aid that was being provided to discourage Pyongyang from developing nuclear capability.
North Korea responded by expelling UN inspectors, pulling out of the non-proliferation treaty and reactivating the Yongbyon plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last week referred the issue to the UN Security Council.
US officials yesterday described the war games with Seoul as purely defensive and designed to improve the ability of allied forces to defend South Korea against "external aggression". Joint military exercises take place every year on the Korean peninsula but assume extra significance this year because of the raised tensions over nuclear weapons. A US aircraft carrier will be deployed and a mock battle will be staged. Japan and the US have also reportedly decided to conduct joint tests on intercepting ballistic missiles in Hawaii from next year.
Last week CIA director Mr George Tenet told a Congressional committee that the DPRK had the capacity to reach US territory with as yet untested missiles and that the US believed North Korea already had nuclear warheads.
North Korea fired a multi-stage rocket over Japan in 1998 and is expected to test fire longer-range rockets in the near future. It is said to have 100 Rodong-1 missiles with a range of 1,300 kilometres and South Korea claims it is also testing Taepodong-1 missiles with a range of 2,500 kilometres and developing longer-range Taepodong-2 missiles.
The US attitude to talks pits Washington diplomatically against its ally, South Korea, whose President, Mr Kim Dae-Jung, renewed a call yesterday for direct Washington-Pyongyang contacts to deal with the crisis.
"North Korea wants safety guarantees, the United States wants North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions. There must be a North Korea-US dialogue," he said.
President Kim Dae-jung said North Korea should "not even dream of having nuclear weapons", calling it a dangerous development that could trigger an arms race. "If North Korea gets nuclear weapons, the stance of Japan and our country toward nukes would change," he said.
Pyongyang has insisted that it only intends to produce electricity for its decrepit economy and that the nuclear row is a bilateral dispute with Washington.