Steve Quayle News Alerts

Mar. 30, 2003

SEOUL (AP) — North Korea condemned South Korea today for planning to contribute non-combat troops to the U.S.-led war on Iraq, which it called a test for a U.S. attack on the Korean Peninsula.

The communist North, locked in a standoff over its suspected nuclear weapons program, accuses Washington of planning to target it after Iraq. U.S. President George W. Bush has labelled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran.

"The Iraqi war is a test for the second Korean War," North Korea's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

Washington has repeatedly said it seeks a diplomatic solution to the dispute with North Korea but that all options remain open.

The dispute flared in October when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted having a secret nuclear program in violation of the 1994 pact. Pyongyang denies making such an admission, and accuses Washington of inciting the crisis as a pretext for an invasion.

Rodong Sinmun said South Korean authorities deserve "curses and denunciation" for planning to send 700 military engineers and medics to support the war in Iraq, which it called "a vicious challenge to the sovereignty of an independent country."

The planned troop dispatch — which must be approved by South Korea's National Assembly — "is a criminal act of welcoming the United States' war of aggression" against North Korea, it said.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has called the dispatch a ``strategic choice," and said close U.S.-South Korean ties are essential for peacefully resolving the nuclear standoff.

Roh's top security adviser, Ra Jong-il, left for Russia and China — two countries with relatively close ties to reclusive North Korea — on Sunday in an attempt to find a peaceful solution. His trip comes as South Korea's foreign minister is visiting the United States and Japan.

Ra will hold talks in Moscow on Monday to Tuesday and then visit Beijing for two days.

"We expect this visit would help strengthen co-operation with Russia and China on diplomatic and security affairs," the presidential office said in a brief statement.

Washington and its allies, Seoul and Tokyo, are discussing a multilateral approach to ending the nuclear standoff, but North Korea has insisted on direct talks with Washington and a bilateral non-aggression pact.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan asked officials in Washington to be more flexible in drawing North Korea into talks to end the dispute, the Yonhap news agency said Saturday.

"We offered item-by-item steps we can take toward multilateral talks, and the U.S. side said they will study them," Yoon was quoted as telling South Korean journalists after his talks with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Yoon did not elaborate.

North Korea insisted on Saturday it would make no concessions or compromises, saying Iraq had erred by opening its weapons facilities to UN inspectors.

North Korea "would have already met the same miserable fate as Iraq's had it . . . accepted the demand raised by the imperialists and its followers for 'nuclear inspection' and disarmament," North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

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