North hints at new missile test

North Korea continued to play nerve-rattling cards in its game of nuclear brinkmanship with the United States, while Seoul vowed to step up diplomatic efforts to resolve the situation. The desire for peaceful resolution by diplomacy has been widely affirmed, but North Korea's neighbors speak with different accents as to the details of handling Pyeongyang's nuclear aspirations.

Only a day after declaring that it was walking out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, North Korea's ambassador to China, Choe Jin-su, threatened that his country might end its missile test moratorium.

"We have temporarily halted missile test launches in an anticipation that the United States would stop its hard-line policy," Mr. Choe said in a Saturday press briefing in Beijing. "And yet, Washington nullified all bilateral agreements. We, thus, believe we can resume the missile test."

North Korea's test-fired its Daepodong I missile across Japan in 1998, but the next year its leader Kim Jong-il declared a moratorium on missile tests until 2003.

The North Korean diplomat also denied published reports that it would return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if Washington resumes fuel oil deliveries for civilian energy use. Washington cut off the supply after Pyeongyang's clandestine nuclear program was revealed in October.

Pyeongyang lashed out against the rising possibility that the North Korea problem would be sent to the United Nations Security Council. "North Korea will regard any sanction by the Security Council as a declaration of war," its UN ambassador, Pak Gil-yon, said Friday in New York.

The board of the International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to meet Wednesday, and the foreign ministers of the Security Council countries will meet next Monday.

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung again stressed yesterday the need for resolution by diplomacy. James Kelly, U.S. assistant secretary of state, arrived in Seoul yesterday and will meet with the president-elect, foreign minister and presidential foreign-affairs adviser today.

Differences over the next diplomatic move emerged among the key players. Washington continues to say that it will enter dialogue with Pyeongyang but not negotiate over its broken promises. The United States wants to devise economic sanctions through the Security Council, but China, Russia and South Korea disagree.

Russia said Saturday that it was too soon for Security Council action. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has proposed to his counterparts a comprehensive resolution, reportedly including a guarantee of the North Korean regime's security.

Diplomatic sources in China said yesterday that Beijing opposed a multilateral plan to adopt a resolution against the North, as it had done in the 1993-94 nuclear crisis on the peninsula. China has been relatively tight-lipped, but diplomats said Beijing has expressed its dissatisfaction with Washington for not entering talks.

Tokyo also wants to resolve the North Korean question through dialogue, not sanctions, its deputy chief cabinet secretary, Shinzo Abe, said.

In France yesterday, Japan's Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi reportedly urged caution in talks with French President Jacques Chirac, saying that a hard line would exacerbate the situation.

North Korea staged a massive anti-American rally Saturday in its capital. One million North Koreans gathered and expressed support for the regime's decision to pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

by Kim Chong-hyuk