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US Threatens Blockade Of North Korea

North Korea has warned that sanctions would be considered an act of war.

By Michael Sheridan

WASHINGTON: The United States will mount a naval blockade of North Korea and impose sanctions if it begins to make nuclear weapons-grade plutonium, says a high-ranking Bush official.

The unnamed figure disclosed the plan last week while briefing Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. North Korea has warned that sanctions would be considered an act of war.

The briefing was apparently intended to reassure the Japanese that the United States will take strong action against North Korea over its nuclear programme. North Korea monitors the Japanese media closely.

American satellites have spotted activity at the Yongbyon reactor site in North Korea, suggesting that scientists may be moving nuclear fuel rods to a reprocessing facility nearby.

The official was quoted as saying that if North Korea started making plutonium, Washington would consider the country to have “crossed the Rubicon” and would impose sanctions and a blockade.

Tokyo is about to give its backing to an American military strike on Iraq but has expressed disquiet about a perceived “double standard” towards North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction.

Japanese foreign ministry officials fear North Korea may test a nuclear weapon to bring the Americans to the negotiating table. The American official’s briefing said it was “very likely” North Korea would reactivate its reprocessing plant, extract plutonium, resume test-firing of ballistic missiles and declare that it possessed nuclear weapons.

Plutonium was at the core of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

North Korea also has a clandestine programme to obtain supplies of uranium-235, the core of the less sophisticated bomb used against Hiroshima. For Japan, the only country ever to be the subject of atomic attacks, the issue is particularly sensitive.

Alarm bells about a North Korean nuclear threat first began to ring in Japan after January 20, when William Cohen, a former American defence secretary and moderate Republican, suggested at a meeting in Tokyo that Pyongyang could obtain nuclear weapons.

Cohen said Japan would be protected by the proposed American missile defence shield but his remarks led the Japanese government to question the commitment of the US to force North Korea to dispose of its plutonium and shelve its nuclear ambitions.

“This is a matter of life and death for Japan,” said Kenzo Yoneda, a senior vice-minister in the cabinet office.

Japan’s reaction to any hint of a compromise by the US may have prompted the Pentagon to send reinforcements and extra fighter planes to the Pacific to deter North Korea while the Iraq war is in progress. That decision has outraged Pyongyang, which issued a number of threats last week.

A naval blockade would cut off North Korea’s exports of missiles and weapons technology, its only significant source of foreign exchange. That would present a challenge to the survival of the regime.

Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator, has spent the past few weeks making “inspection visits” to boost morale among the armed forces. However, North Korean diplomats are still sending out signals that they want negotiations. America, for its part, has assured North Korea that it does not intend to attack.

This Wednesday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna will meet to discuss whether to go to the United Nations Security Council over the crisis. North Korea has expelled IAEA inspectors and disabled monitoring equipment. It has formally withdrawn from the nuclear non- proliferation treaty.

Japanese politicians will also not be reassured by the discovery that a delegation of North Korean doctors quietly visited Hiroshima in 1994 to study how the Japanese treated victims of radiation sickness and flash burns caused by the atomic blast there. Daily Times - All Rights Reserved