The commander of US forces in the Pacific has asked the Pentagon for reinforcements to deter any "adventure" by North Korea if the US goes to war against Iraq, defense officials said on Friday.
Other US officials said that US spy satellites showed North Korea was moving fuel rods around a key nuclear complex, including possibly some of the 8,000 spent fuel rods that experts consider a key tripwire in bomb-building.
But there was no sign that crucial reprocessing of those spent fuel rods had begun, they added.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has made no decision on the request for additional forces by Admiral Thomas Fargo, said a senior defense official, adding that they could include several thousand troops, bombers and perhaps an aircraft carrier.
The US already has 37,000 troops in South Korea, but Fargo had asked for some additional forces along with B-1 and B-52 bombers to let North Korea know that the US was prepared for any contingency, officials said.
"The admiral [Fargo] wants to be sure that the North Koreans don't launch any adventure to take advantage of what they might see as preoccupation with Iraq," said one defense official. "He feels it would be a prudent step."
The officials said the request had been pending for weeks but that US President George W. Bush wanted to peacefully settle the crisis over Pyongyang's resumption of its nuclear program and was moving carefully.
The US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk is based in Yokosuka, Japan. But the ship could be sent to the Gulf if Bush decides to launch an invasion of Iraq.
The Korean crisis was sparked last October when the US said Pyong-yang had admitted to developing a highly enriched uranium program in violation of a 1994 accord, under which the North froze its nuclear program in exchange for two nuclear energy reactors and economic assistance.
Bush administration officials seem increasingly convinced that Pyongyang is determined to launch full-scale production of nuclear weapons.
As there has been for the past month, "there is still activity around Yongbyon, some of it associated with the reactor, an immediate thing that's not as bad as reprocessing but still isn't good," a senior official said.
"I don't discount that they might begin reprocessing in the next month, or do another missile launch," but there were no signs of preparations for such a test, he said.
Another official said Yongbyon was "bustling with activity. There are canisters and vehicles moving about. It's hard to rule in or out that spent fuel rods are on the move but it's certainly plausible," the official said.
US officials in recent weeks have detected that North Korea had moved quantities of fresh fuel rods to the area of a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. The reactor converts uranium fuel rods to plutonium.
An even more significant step would be for Pyongyang to move 8,000 spent fuel rods -- which have already gone through the reactor -- from a holding pond where they had been mothballed under the 1994 agreement.
In the nuclear arms process, spent fuel rods go through a reprocessing facility where the plutonium for weapons is extracted.
Fresh fuel rods "probably" have been moved at Yongbyon and spent fuel rods "possibly" have been moved, said one official, noting that intelligence was not clear-cut.
Another official who initially said he believed the spent fuel rods were still in the cooling pond later amended his comment, saying, "We don't know" where they are.
Faced with media reports on the Yongbyon activities, the administration warned North Korea against taking any steps to reprocess plutonium.
"Any steps toward beginning reprocessing would be yet another provocative action by North Korea intended to intimidate and blackmail the international community," presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
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