The Bush administration is expanding what it calls "defensive measures" against North Korea, urging nations from China to the former Soviet states to deny overflight rights to aircraft that the US says are carrying weapons technology, according to two senior administration officials.
At the same time, the officials said, the administration is accelerating an effort to place radiation detectors at land crossings and at airports throughout Central Asia, which are aimed both at North Korea and the risk that nuclear weapons material could be removed from facilities in the former Soviet states.
The new campaign was sped up this summer after a previously undisclosed incident in June, when US satellites tracked an Iranian cargo plane landing in North Korea. The two countries have a history of missile trade -- Iran's Shahab missile is a derivative of a North Korean design -- and intelligence officials suspected the plane was picking up missile parts.
Rather than watch silently, senior Bush administration officials began urging nations in the area to deny the plane the right to fly over their territory. China and at least one central Asian nation cooperated, according to senior officials, who confirmed the outlines of the incident to demonstrate that President George W. Bush's strategy to curb proliferation, which has been criticized by some experts for moving too slowly, is showing results.
The officials said they believed the Iranian plane left without its cargo, but they are not sure. Nonetheless, the new effort underscored the lengths the administration is undertaking to curb North Korea's exports of missile parts, drugs and counterfeit currency that are widely believed to be the country's main source of revenue -- and that are believed to finance its nuclear program.
In interviews, the officials insisted that the more aggressive tactics would enhance the effort by the US to continue negotiations over disarming North Korea, which have lasted for two years and resulted last month in a statement of broad principles to disarm, but no agreement about when or how.
"We are taking a number of new steps -- defensive measures -- that are intended to provide protection against all aspects of the North Korean proliferation threat," said Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, who has been visiting former Soviet republics and other nations to secure commitments to halt flights like the one in June.
"These measures are necessary for our defense and the defense of our friends and allies," said Joseph, regarded as an administration hawk on North Korea.
He also said the measures "are independent of the diplomatic efforts that we are pursuing" with the North that also include China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
"We believe that they will reinforce the prospect for the success of those talks," he said.
DIVIDED
But Asian allies are divided on that question. South Korea's government, which is preparing for a visit by Bush next month, has been privately warning against taking steps that would aggravate North Korea. Arguing that "status quo isn't working," one senior administration official said this weekend that "we have to defend against illicit activity that harms America."
Russia has expressed similar concerns about pressuring Iran, saying that action may force Tehran to show its defiance by resuming the enrichment of uranium.
On Sunday evening, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley arrived in Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and a range of Russian national security officials.
The US efforts to exert more pressure on both North Korea and Iran -- questions on which Moscow and Washington have been deeply divided -- are expected to figure in his discussions.
Hadley is the second high-level administration official to arrive here in the past 10 days. Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was here on a similar mission, though when she left, Russian officials said they were still opposed to any step that would refer Iran to the UN Security Council for sanctions. For Russia, it is a matter of business as well as politics: Moscow is selling Iran the technology for a civilian nuclear reactor.
THREE COMPONENTS
The new administration effort has three components, according to Joseph and other officials. The first is to block the sale of any bomb material or radioactive material from North Korea.
The second is to beef up anti-proliferation efforts, including by denying overflight rights.
Joseph recently visited Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, urging them to join a program called the Proliferation Security Initiative, which began as an effort to seize equipment at sea -- like the BBC China, a freighter filled with centrifuge parts bound for Libya that was seized two years ago.
"We were inspired by the June incident," one senior official said this weekend, "and we said, `Let's be more systematic.'"
A third component of the effort is to step up "counterproliferation," which involves preparing nations to counter chemical or biological weapons, and work out ways to defend against a missile attack. Japan, which has grown more hawkish on North Korea, has said it will join the US missile defense program, basing its anti-missile system on ships offshore. South Korea has declined, though it has long made use of the US-made Patriot system against short-range missiles.
One administration official cautioned that "some of these programs are new descriptions of older efforts, with more money in the pot."
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