Tuesday, February 04, 2003
TWO-FRONT WAR? U.S. MOVES MORE FORCES NEAR KOREA
The Bush administration continues to stress its desire for a diplomatic solution to the current crisis, but observers note the following:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has put 24 long-range bombers on alert for possible deployment within range of North Korea, both to deter "opportunism" at a moment when Washington is focused on Iraq and to give President Bush military options if diplomacy fails to halt North Korea's effort to produce nuclear weapons, officials said today.
The White House insisted today that Mr. Bush was still committed to a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Any decision to bolster the considerable American military presence near North Korea was simply what Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman, called making "certain our contingencies are viable."
The Bush administration continues to stress its desire for a diplomatic solution to the current crisis, but observers note the following:
At the same time, administration officials, in private briefings to members of Congress, have confirmed that North Korea appears to be moving spent nuclear spent-fuel rods that have been in storage since 1994.
If reprocessed into plutonium, those rods would provide the raw material for upwards of a half dozen weapons — about one a month once the reprocessing plant is in full operation, experts say. That gives Mr. Bush a window of what one senior official said today was "a few weeks to a few months to decide if he wants to do something about Yongbyon," the nuclear complex, before the plutonium production is under way, and any military strike would risk spreading radioactive pollution around the Korean Peninsula.
