Rumsfeld sees rising dangers in North Korea

WASHINGTON -- The official Bush administration view of North Korea's nuclear breakout is that, while troubling, it does not amount to a crisis. Yet that is exactly the word that comes to mind when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld talks about its dangers.

To Rumsfeld, it's not simply a matter of North Korea becoming a nuclear weapons state. The CIA estimates that the communist-ruled country has had one or two nuclear weapons for nearly a decade.

In his view the bigger danger is that, by cranking up a nuclear weapons production complex that had been idled under U.N. seal since 1994, a cash-starved North Korea could produce enough nuclear materials to sell to terrorist states or terror networks who might make America a target.

Sufficient materials

"It's pretty clear that if they restart that reprocessing plant, which they seemed to indicate they intend to do, that they could have nuclear materials sufficient to make an additional six or eight weapons," Rumsfeld told delegates to a European security conference on Saturday.

He said they could have that many extra weapons by May or June. As "the world's leading proliferator" of ballistic missile technology, it would not be hard to imagine that North Korea would sell some of that extra nuclear material on the black market to al-Qaida or Iraq, Rumsfeld said.

That, in Rumsfeld's view, is a frightening example of the nexus between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. It's a principal basis of his argument for why Iraq must be disarmed sooner rather than later, before it acquires a nuclear weapon.

Leading others

There's still another worry about North Korea's nuclear ambitions beyond the obvious possibility that it could launch a nuclear attack or blackmail others by threatening one. There is a fear that a nuclear-armed North Korea could lead others in the region, including Japan, Taiwan and South Korea -- which once had a nuclear program but gave it up -- to decide they, too, must have the ultimate weapon.

Rumsfeld has not suggested a military solution to the North Korean problem, but he has mentioned that the North Koreans -- like the Iraqis -- are on the State Department's list of terrorist states. Both, along with Iran, are in the "axis of evil" that Bush condemned a year ago.

In an interview with reporters traveling with him Friday, Rumsfeld predicted that North Korea would become "within a year or two or three" the leading example of why, in his view, the set of international treaties and agreements designed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons is failing.

He said the problem is too big for any one country to handle alone.

"It's going to take an enormous effort across the globe," he said.

War with North Korea would be a risky proposition. The country has an extraordinarily large and well-concealed arsenal of artillery within range of South Korea's capital, Seoul, as well as stocks of chemical and possibly biological weapons not to mention the one or two nuclear weapons.

That reality is the main reason the Bush administration has tried to approach North Korea's renewed defiance of U.N. nuclear safeguards with the stated intention of finding a peaceful solution. In recent days, however, Rumsfeld has raised the issue with a greater sense of urgency and concern.

Speaking to U.S. troops at the Aviano Air Base in Italy on Friday, Rumsfeld noted without prompting that while Iraq is a threat, so too are countries such as North Korea, which already have nuclear weapons.

"That danger is one we have to face," Rumsfeld said.