N. Korea nuclear test rocks world

By Nick Wadhams
Associated Press

The North Korean nuclear crisis settled into diplomatic debate Tuesday, with China agreeing to punishment but not the severe U.S.-backed sanctions that it said would be too crushing for its impoverished communist ally.

Scientists and other governments, meanwhile, suggested that Monday’s underground test was a partial failure, producing a smaller blast than planned.

The Bush administration asked the U.N. Security Council to impose a partial trade embargo including strict limits on Korea’s profitable weapons exports and freezing of related financial assets. All imports would be inspected too, to filter out materials that could be made into nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

The United States reiterated that it would not talk with the North Koreans one-on-one, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured the North that the United States would not attack.

Rice rejected a suggestion that Pyongyang may feel it needs nuclear weapons to stave off an Iraq-style U.S. invasion. President Bush, she told CNN, has told “the North Koreans that there is no intention to invade or attack them. So they have that guarantee. ... I don’t know what more they want.”

China, which reacted to Monday’s blast with a strong condemnation but considers North Korea a useful buffer against U.S. forces stationed in South Korea, said it envisioned only a limited package of sanctions — not what the United States and especially Japan were demanding.

“We certainly understand that Japan is close to the country. But I think you cannot ask by this resolution to kill a country,” China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya told The Associated Press. He said the Security Council must impose “punitive actions” but that they have to “be appropriate.”

Though far less than what the Americans and Japanese seek, even calling for some punishment was significant for China, which usually opposes sanctions, particularly against an ally such as North Korea.

Pyongyang again demanded one-on-one talks with Washington and threatened to launch a nuclear-tipped missile if the United States doesn’t help resolve the standoff.

The war of words suggested tough negotiations before the United Nations takes any action against North Korea. In the meantime, scientists and governments tried to determine what exactly happened early Monday, deep below the earth in North Korea’s northeast mountains. The North Korean government has released few details.

A South Korean newspaper quoted a North Korean diplomat, whom it did not name, saying that the blast was “smaller in scale” than expected.

“But the success in a small-scale (test) means a large-scale (test) is also possible,” he said in comments posted on the Web site of newspaper Hankyoreh, which has good ties with the communist nation.

The diplomat also said the North could take “additional measures” and that it doesn’t fear sanctions.

Philip Coyle, at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, a nongovernment think tank, expressed a growing view that “they got a partial result” and not the full-power explosion that they sought. Several Western estimates said the blast was less than a tenth the size of the bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945; the force of the Hiroshima bomb was equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT.

But “for them it was enough ... to say that it was a success. It helps them to claim that they are a nuclear power, and that the world should take them seriously, which is what they want. But I wouldn’t be surprised if after several months they don’t try again.”

The White House said there is a “remote possibility” that the world never will be able to fully determine whether North Korea succeeded in conducting a nuclear test Monday.

Democrats said the test was evidence of a failed Bush administration policy, which White House press secretary Tony Snow denied.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said President Clinton was to blame for his 1990s program to entice the North Koreans toward more cooperation. “The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They’ve diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military,” he said.

After the reclusive regime announced it had set off an underground atomic explosion, the Security Council quickly condemned North Korea’s decision to flout a U.N. appeal to cancel the test. The 15-nation council urged Pyongyang to return to stalled talks, refrain from further tests and keep its pledge to scrap its clandestine weapons program.

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