A nuclear weapons test by North Korea would reverberate around the world, altering the nuclear balance in Asia and posing stark new challenges for US policy-makers and military planners.
It could also induce China, Russia and other powers to join the US in seeking UN-approved penalties against the hard-line communist country, analysts suggest.
With US officials increasingly concerned that North Korea may conduct a test soon, how would Washington respond?
First, the Bush administration probably would try to involve the UN. Less clear is whether US President George W. Bush would consider a risky military strike -- given North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's million-man army, heavy conventional weaponry and perhaps several nuclear weapons.
"The North Koreans are basically hellbent on proving to the world that they need to be taken seriously. That's dangerous," said Representative Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
"A North Korean test would embarrass China and might actually rally other nations to our position. But the result might push Kim Jong-il to take whatever steps he felt were necessary to rally his people into war," Weldon said.
Weldon, who led a delegation to North Korea in January, said he met last Monday in New York with North Korea's deputy UN ambassador, Han Song-ryol, and told him, "If you do a test, you're going to set this process back years and years, and it's going to lead to consequences neither of us want."
Meanwhile, North Korea has indicated a willingness to return to the bargaining table but said it is waiting for Washington to clarify conflicting statements on US policy. Citing differences between Washington's public and private statements, the North's official Korean Central News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman Sunday as saying Pyongyang "will continue to closely watch the US side's attitude, and when the time comes we will officially deliver to the US side our position through the New York contacts."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Monday that the Bush administration sees no contradictions in its statements on North Korea.
"The six-party talks are the way forward to resolving this issue. We want to see them come back to the talks. We have no preconditions for returning to the talks and we've made that very clear," he said.
US officials want China to exert more pressure on its longtime ally. China says bullying rhetoric by the US makes it harder to coax the North Koreans back to the negotiating table.
"The potential downside of a test is enormous," said Kurt Campbell, former assistant secretary of defense for Asia in the Clinton administration. "It would set off a chain reaction in the region with completely impossible-to-predict consequences."
It could even lead South Korea and Japan to rethink their policy against nuclear arsenals, he said.
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
Cozy knits, sparkly bobbles and Santa hats were all the canine rage on Sunday, as hundreds of sausage dogs and their owners converged on central London for an annual parade and get-together. The dachshunds’ gathering in London’s Hyde Park came after a previous “Sausage Walk” planned for Halloween had to be postponed, because it had become so popular organizers needed to apply for an events licence. “It was going to be too much fun so they canceled it,” laughed Nicky Bailey, the owner of three sausage dogs: Una and her two 19-week-old puppies Ember and Finnegan, wearing matching red coats and silver
RSS