WASHINGTON — U.S. policy options are dwindling fast on how to halt North Korea’s headlong rush to build a nuclear arsenal.
The crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program will dominate talks when Secretary of State Colin Powell visits Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul beginning Friday. As it announced Powell’s trip on Wednesday, the State Department balanced a demand that North Korea “visibly, verifiably and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear weapons program” with a hint that the Bush administration would be open to talks, under certain conditions.
“We have no plans to attack or invade North Korea,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, adding that the Bush administration is “pursuing a peaceful approach.”
But Washington has not said what its North Korea policy will be, even as analysts warn that North Korea may be dead-set on acquiring nuclear weapons and not willing to negotiate.
If North Korea quickly becomes a major nuclear power, Japan and other countries might seek nuclear weapons of their own, and the possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula would increase. Cash-strapped North Korea also could choose to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists.
North Korea could have a half dozen nuclear weapons within weeks or months. U.S. intelligence agencies say it already may have one or two.
Washington faces an “imminent danger” if Pyongyang begins serial production of nuclear weapons, said former Defense Secretary William Perry, who oversaw efforts to halt North Korea’s nuclear program during the Clinton administration.
“If they get them, they might sell them to the highest bidder, including terrorists. Time is of the essence,” Perry said at a forum last week at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

— Tim Johnson, Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)