North Korea’s nuclear test and threats to test intercontinental ballistic missiles amid concerns over a leadership succession makes for “a potentially dangerous mixture,” the top US intelligence official warned.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said North Korea’s recent behavior was following a familiar pattern, but this time it was “using more dangerous sorts of weapons, potentially intercontinental missiles and nuclear weapons.”
“So although the pattern is familiar the level of risk is higher,” he said late on Monday in remarks to business leaders with ties to the intelligence community.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The assessment comes amid rising US-North Korean tensions following Pyongyang’s test last month of a nuclear bomb, a series of short-range missile launches, and the renunciation of the 1953 truce that ended the Korean war.
South Korean media reported last week that the North appears to be assembling a long-range missile, possibly of intercontinental range, for another test launch in defiance of international criticism.
“I think overlaid on that are the succession concerns of the current leader,” Blair said, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
“He had a stroke last summer and recently designated his son as his successor,” Blair said, referring to reports that Kim had tapped his 26-year-old son Kim Jong-un to replace him.
“So any time you have a combination of this behavior, doing provocative things in order to excite a response, plus succession questions, you have a potentially dangerous mixture,” he said.
Blair said the judgment that the risks are greater this time around was “informing the activities the US is involved in now, working with the other countries in the six-party talks to try to put a ring around North Korea and handle it.”
For its part, North Korea said yesterday it would use its nuclear weapons both to defend itself and to carry out a reprisal for any attack by its enemies.
The country would answer any pre-emptive strike with “an advanced pre-emptive strike” of its own, the Cabinet newspaper Minju Joson said.
The nuclear deterrent would be a strong tool to protect regional peace and carry out a “just retaliatory strike” which would be “merciless” on those who infringe on its dignity and sovereignty, it said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday the US was working hard to create a mechanism that would allow for interdiction of suspect North Korean shipments of missiles or nuclear material.
“If we do not take significant and effective action against the North Koreans now, we’ll spark an arms race in Northeast Asia,” Clinton said.
“And so part of what we’re doing is, again, sharing with other countries our calculus of the risks and the dangers that would lie ahead if we don’t take very strong action,” she said in a television interview.
Meanwhile, Washington is being forced to grapple with North Korea over its sentencing of two US journalists to 12 years in a labor camp.
On Monday, Clinton asked North Korea to show clemency and deport the two, Laura Ling (凌志美) and Euna Lee, who were detained in March along North Korea’s border with China while researching a story on refugees for San Francisco-based Current TV.
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