N. Korea - U.S. attack on nuclear facilities would trigger war

SEOUL, South Korea -- Pre-emptive attacks on North Korea's nuclear facilities would trigger a "total war," the communist state warned Thursday after Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld labeled the North's government a "terrorist regime."

The White House said North Korea's talk of war was a "real cause for concern." Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said the United States had "robust plans for any contingencies," including military action.

The harsh rhetoric came a day after North Korea said it was putting the operation of its nuclear facilities on a "normal footing," triggering fears it was about to produce weapons materials. South Korea said it had no sign that the North had reactivated its nuclear facilities, but officials said the North's statements were unclear and that they were trying to clear them up.

"When the U.S. makes a surprise attack on our peaceful facilities, it will spark off a total war," the state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary carried by North Korea's official news agency, KCNA.

Ri Pyong Gap, a spokesman and deputy director at the North's Foreign Ministry, told London's The Guardian newspaper that the impoverished country was entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against the United States.

"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next," the paper quoted Ri as saying, "but we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the U.S."

In Washington, Fleischer reiterated that President Bush believes the standoff can be resolved peacefully, but he said the United States was preparing military contingencies.

U.S. officials have spoken before about their ability to respond to any potential hostile action by North Korea, in part to dispel any hopes Pyongyang may have about taking advantage of Bush's focus on Iraq. The nuclear standoff with North Korea, which intensified last fall, has complicated Bush's efforts to rally the nation and skeptical world leaders behind his bid to disarm Saddam Hussein.

Rumsfeld said Wednesday that restarting the nuclear program would give the North a troubling option -- making nuclear weapons for itself or selling them to any other country.

"That is something the world has to take very seriously," he said. "It's a regime that is a terrorist regime. It's a regime that has been involved in things that are harmful to other countries."

North Korea announced in December it would reactivate its nuclear facilities, frozen since 1994, but statements Wednesday left it unclear whether it has already done so.

In an English-language statement, North Korea said Wednesday that it "is now putting the operation of its nuclear facilities for the production of electricity on a normal footing after their restart."

However, a Korean-language statement monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency referred only to "our process to restart nuclear facilities for generating electricity and normalize their operation."

Both North Korean statements were carried on KCNA, the North's official news agency.

The North's nuclear facilities include a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, a storage building for 8,000 spent fuel rods and a plant where those rods could be reprocessed to yield enough plutonium for four or five bombs in a matter of months.

Last week, U.S. officials said spy satellites detected covered trucks apparently taking on cargo near the storage building.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear monitoring agency, said it couldn't confirm any new nuclear activities because its inspectors were expelled in December.

The most immediate step the North could take is likely to be restarting the reactor, which can produce more spent fuel rods, South Korean officials said.

"We are trying various channels to confirm what it means," said an official at the South Korean Foreign Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "At this moment, we have no information to confirm that North Korea has reactivated its nuclear facilities, that is the reactor and other key facilities."

North Korea said in December that it was reactivating its facilities to generate badly needed electricity. But U.S. officials say the amount of electricity that can be produced in the Yongbyon facilities is negligible.

The North froze its nuclear facilities in a 1994 energy deal with the United States, but the deal unraveled after U.S. officials said in October that North Korea had admitted embarking on a second, clandestine nuclear program.

Washington and its allies suspended oil shipments as punishment. The North then took steps to restart the nuclear facilities, expelled U.N. monitors and withdrew from a global nuclear arms control treaty.

The U.N. nuclear agency's 35-nation board of governors will meet next Wednesday to discuss the standoff and is almost certain to send the dispute to the U.N. Security Council -- a move that could lead to economic sanctions against Pyongyang.