On a trip to East Asia, US Secretary of State Colin Powell intends to work out a strategy with Japan, China and South Korea on how to convince North Korea it is not under threat of attack.
The aim is to revive negotiations to curb North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. Before leaving, Powell acknowledged that US intelligence experts did not know how advanced the programs were and may not be able to find out.
Powell also cautioned Taiwan in an interview with the Far Eastern Economic Review that any move toward independence "has the potential for creating a real crisis in the region."
In a radio interview on Friday, Powell noted that North Korea keeps accusing the US of hostile intent.
"It's a nice little cover line that they use," Powell said on Fox News Radio's Tony Snow Show. But he said he would be discussing a strategy for responding "with all our friends in the region on this upcoming trip."
Also, Powell said, "We are essentially in a discussion, a debate, negotiation" as to what North Korea might get in exchange for halting development of weapons-grade uranium.
North Korea says it wants security guarantees and economic aid in exchange for dealing with other countries' fears about its nuclear activities. The US wants an immediate halt to nuclear activities and renewed international inspections. South Korea and Japan have offered fuel oil to the impoverished country as an incentive.
During the Clinton administration, North Korea agreed to stop its plutonium-based nuclear program in exchange for 500,000 metric tonnes of heavy oil annually from the US and help for its energy programs from Japan and South Korea.
The aid was stopped after the Americans said North Korea had admitted to having a uranium-based nuclear program.
"President Bush has made it clear that we are not interested in invading North Korea," Powell said Friday. "We want to help the North Korean people. But that help will only come when they have, in a way that is fully verifiable, gotten rid of their nuclear weapons programs."
Powell told the Far Eastern Economic Review in the interview published on Thursday that in the absence of more solid information, the administration has stuck by its estimate dating back several years that North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons.
North Korea's vice foreign minister, Choe Su-hon, said on Sept. 27 that his country has turned plutonium extracted from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into several nuclear weapons.
Experts have said the rods could yield enough plutonium for eight bombs.
Powell's caution on North Korea's nuclear arms program contrasts sharply with the administration's confident assertions almost two years ago that Iraq was developing of weapons of mass destruction.
The administration has since concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles of such weapons.
Powell conceded that the administration doesn't know what the North Koreans have done with the fuel rods since they ordered an end to UN nuclear inspection operations early last year.
"The intelligence community cannot tell you whether or not there are more weapons or not," Powell said. "They are making assumptions, and they are doing the best that they can, you know, with a country that does not exactly post this stuff on their Web site."
Intelligence experts "cannot come to a definitive answer," Powell said, adding there's no reason they should be able to.
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