North Korea says new alliance is 'a US provocation'

Daily Telegraph
September 15, 2003
By Richard Spencer in Beijing

The first exercise of a new security alliance, including Britain, intended to intercept weapons of mass destruction on the high seas was attacked as a "US provocation" by North Korea yesterday.

Exercise Pacific Protector culminated in a two-and-a-half-hour chase across the Coral Sea, east of Australia, and the capture of a United States naval vessel masquerading as a freighter carrying chemical weapons.

Ten armed and masked men from the Japanese coastguard slipped down a rope from a helicopter on to the deck of the US navy support ship Private Franklin J Phillips.

They were helped, watched and monitored by their coastguard ship Shikishima, vessels from the American and Australian navies and a French marine patrol aircraft.

The exercise was the first trial of the Proliferation Security Initiative, an agreement between Japan, America, Australia and seven other countries to establish a security cordon against shipments of weapons of mass destruction and drugs.

It was proposed by President George W Bush amid evidence that North Korea was relying on sales of weapons, drugs and counterfeit money for much of its foreign exchange.

Spokesmen for the alliance said the exercise was not specifically aiming at the dictatorship of Kim Jong-il, but North Korea's official media reacted angrily.

"Such moves of the United States are blatant military provocations to North Korea and they may push US relations to an explosive phase," the party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said yesterday.

The alliance is partly intended to put pressure on North Korea politically, suggesting that if it does not give in to international pressure to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme its "undesirable" international trade might be blocked.

America also hopes to prevent a recurrence of the incident last December when it captured a shipment of missiles bound for Yemen from North Korea, but discovered that it had no legal powers to impound them.

Robert Hill, the Australian defence minister, implicitly acknowledged criticism that no legal framework for and interceptions by the alliance exists, saying a team was "working on" the problem. "The operation has got to be within the law," he said.

North Korea is a known exporter of weapons, primarily its Scud-type Nodong missile technology, though it has never been accused of trading its considerable chemical and biological arsenal or its nuclear technology.

But during recent talks it has threatened to test a weapon, and even to export the technology, if its demands for a non-aggression treaty with America are not met.

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