The deployment last week of 15 stealth fighters to South Korea, along with the severing of the US military's only official interaction with North Korea, appears to be part of a new push by the Bush administration to further isolate Pyongyang despite China's hesitation to join the effort.
The deployment, confirmed by the Pentagon on Friday after several news reports, came just after the Defense Department said Wednesday that it was suspending the search for soldiers missing in action since the Korean War.
Although senior Pentagon officials say the F-117 stealth fighters are part of preparation for a long-planned training exercise, the show of force comes at a delicate moment both militarily and politically. China, South Korea and some experts in the US have urged the administration to make a more specific offer to the North, laying out what it would get in return for giving up its nuclear arms program. Administration officials, however, have suggested in recent interviews that they are headed toward taking a hard line, cracking down on the North's exports of missiles, drugs and counterfeit currency.
The US warned its allies this month that the North might be preparing to test a nuclear weapon. Now senior officials say US intelligence agencies are still monitoring several locations in the North where a nuclear test might be held, though they readily concede the evidence that the North will proceed with a test is "partial."
Some officials say they doubt that North Korea's leaders are ready to risk galvanizing its neighbors against it by conducting a test and removing all ambiguity about claims that it has built nuclear weapons.
"It's a very tough calculus for the North Koreans," said one senior official.
In struggling to deal with the North's threats and its demands for concessions in return for coming back to the negotiating table, the Bush administration has sent a series of seemingly mixed messages. President George W. Bush himself has repeatedly said he has no "intention" of attacking North Korea. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said several weeks ago that the US recognized the North as a sovereign state.
In a change that reflects a failure of the present policy, some officials say they will no longer rely heavily on China to sway the North Koreans. Senior officials say they now realize that China may never be willing to use its leverage over Pyongyang.
The Chinese appear to be perfectly happy to have North Korea "roll along in this seemingly stable netherworld" one official said, rather than risk destabilizing the nation, possibly unleashing a flood of desperate and hungry refugees across its eastern border.
But in the absence of talks, much of the discussion inside the administration now is about instituting strong punitive measures, including interceptions of any shipments of suspected illicit goods.
On Saturday, however, one official said that such an effort "just won't work if we can't get the Chinese to go along."
Even as the administration accepts a more pessimistic view of China's willingness to help, almost every option under discussion similarly relies on China.
A senior State Department official said the Chinese "are genuinely concerned about North Korea's nuclear weapons."
The official added: "They can make life uncomfortable for them in small ways. They are still working on it. Will they succeed? I don't know."
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