17 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some U.S. bombers, fighter jets and warships have been alerted for possible deployment to the western Pacific to deter any aggression by North Korea (news - web sites) in case of a war in Iraq, U.S. defense officials said on Monday. The officials told Reuters that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had not issued any final orders to move B-52 bombers, F-16 fighter jets or naval units closer to the tense Korean peninsula, now gripped in a nuclear crisis.
The additional forces have been requested by Adm. Thomas Fargo, based in Hawaii as head of U.S. forces in the Pacific and Asia rim. "If such forces are moved, it would be done as a precautionary deterrent presence against any North Korean aggression in the event of a war in Iraq," said one of the defense officials, who asked not to be identified. Washington has insisted that it wants to settle differences with Pyongyang peacefully and the officials stressed the possible deployment did not include any ground forces to join the 37,000 U.S. troops now stationed in South Korea (news - web sites).
Officials said additional F-16 fighter jets could be moved from the United States to bases in Japan and heavy B-52 or B-1B bombers could be moved to within emergency striking distance of North Korea -- perhaps to Guam. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, currently in Hawaii, might also be deployed toward the Korean peninsula if the carrier USS Kitty Hawk is ordered to leave the western Pacific and head for the Gulf in the event President Bush (news - web sites) decides to invade Iraq, officials said.
TENSION RISING ON PENINSULA
The defense officials spoke as North Korea said its troops were at the ready in case of any U.S. "military and political moves" against it.
The U.N. agency that oversaw a freeze in the communist state's nuclear program until it was thrown out in December said it would hold an emergency session on Feb. 12 and was likely to ask the U.N. Security Council to take up the issue. The Korean crisis was sparked last October when the United States said Pyongyang had admitted to developing a highly enriched uranium program in violation of a 1994 accord, under which the North froze its nuclear program in exchange for two nuclear energy reactors and economic assistance. But Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) took pains last week to reaffirm that the United States had "no intention of attacking" North Korea.
Bush administration officials, however, seem increasingly convinced that Pyongyang is determined to begin full-scale production of nuclear weapons. U.S. officials said on Friday that American spy satellites showed North Korea was moving fuel rods around a key nuclear complex, including possibly some of the 8,000 spent fuel rods that experts consider a key tripwire in bomb-building. But there was no sign that crucial reprocessing of those spent fuel rods had begun, they added. In the nuclear arms process, spent fuel rods go through a reprocessing facility where the plutonium for weapons is extracted.
Good time for Powell to go to the UN. This IS a job for the UN, if it doesn't want to be regarded as "irrelevant."