Posted on 10/18/2002 1:48:15 PM PDT by blam
US Believes Pakistan Aided N.Korean Nuclear Program
By Arshad Mohammed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States believes Pakistan helped North Korea develop a nuclear weapons program, U.S. officials said on Friday, as the White House urged North Korea's trading partners not to help it build such weapons.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, strongly denied a report in the New York Times that Pakistan aided North Korea's enriched uranium program, calling it "absolutely baseless."
U.S. officials on Thursday said they believed Russia and China also helped North Korea's secretive Communist government develop the program, but one U.S. official on Friday said the Pakistani help was believed to have been more significant.
North Korea admitted it had the secret nuclear weapons program at a session with U.S. officials in Pyongyang on Oct. 4. That admission means the isolated state, which President Bush has called part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq, has violated the 1994 Agreed Framework under which it promised to halt its nuclear efforts.
News of Pyongyang's nuclear program upsets the delicate balance in the Korean Peninsula, one of the Cold War's last frontiers, where the United States has stationed some 37,000 troops to protect South Korea against attack from the North.
One U.S. official on Friday said such programs typically have more than one supplier.
MORE THAN ONE?
"In almost all cases, there are almost always more than one, and usually multiple, sources," said the official. "To the best of my knowledge, that is the case (here) as well."
At a news conference in Islamabad, Musharraf bluntly denied assisting North Korea with its nuclear program.
"This is absolutely baseless. There is no such thing as collaboration with North Korea in the nuclear arena. Pakistan has several times said, and I have said personally, that Pakistan will never proliferate its nuclear technology and we stand by this commitment," Musharraf told reporters.
Separately, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said it was not in the interests of North Korea's major trading partners to help Pyongyang develop nuclear weapons.
"These countries want good and improved relations with the United States and they have no interest in a nuclearized North Korea," Fleischer told reporters as Bush flew to Missouri to help Republicans running in the Nov. 5 congressional election.
Fleischer did not single out China and Russia and he would not confirm the reports that Pakistan had helped North Korea.
NOT LIKE IRAQ
U.S. officials said they were considering all options for responding to Pyongyang's disclosure of an enriched uranium program and suggested they and U.S. allies, particularly China, might pressure Pyongyang by restricting trade.
But they made it clear that they would not treat North Korea the same as Iraq, which Bush has threatened with military action if President Saddam Hussein ) fails to end his alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
Bush administration officials argued Saddam's history of invading Kuwait in 1990 and of using chemical weapons against his people make him more of a threat than North Korea.
Jim Steinberg, a deputy U.S. national security adviser under former President Bill Clinton, said he was not convinced that Iraq intended to use nuclear weapons if it acquired them but that he saw some merit to the White House argument.
"Where I do agree with them is that he (Saddam) may well use them as a shield to pursue aggressive designs against others on the expectation that it would be harder for people to resist given his possession of nuclear weapons," he said.
"That does distinguish Iraq from North Korea because I do not think there is evidence North Korea is being particularly aggressive these days," Steinberg said.
Citing current and former senior U.S. officials, the New York Times said Pakistan provided North Korea with equipment, which may include gas centrifuges used to create weapons-grade uranium, as part of a deal made in the late 1990s.
In return, North Korea supplied Pakistan with missiles it could use to counter India's nuclear arsenal, the newspaper quoted officials as saying.
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