N. Korea might feel safe from nuclear threat due to nuke capability: commission

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (Yonhap) -- North Korea might feel safe from any nuclear
threat from abroad due to its own nuclear deterrent, a U.S. defense commission
said in a report.

The commission, led by former defense secretary James Schlesinger, focused on
nuclear weapons management.
"As a general proposition, I think that Pyongyang years ago might have had a
higher probability estimate of a nuclear move against North Korea, but as the
decades have gone on and as we have not reacted in the way they might have
anticipated to their development of nuclear capabilities, they might have been
encouraged to believe that they were reasonably safe from a nuclear response,"
said Schlesinger.
The former defense chief in the Nixon administration gave a briefing Thursday at
the Pentagon on a policy report from a task force established by Defense
Secretary Robert Gates.
"I think that that probably is today's situation, that they have developed
confidence -- perhaps misplaced confidence -- that the United States, if it were
to go after their nuclear capabilities, likely would do so with conventional
forces," he said.
Schlesinger's remarks come one day after outgoing President Bush's national
security adviser, Stephen Hadley, depicted North Korea as "an early challenge"
for the incoming Barack Obama administration.
Hadley predicted that North Korea will try to renegotiate a six-party
aid-for-denuclearization deal in an apparent test of the fledgling Obama
administration after its inauguration on Jan. 20 to break up the coordination of
the five other parties.
Critics said that the Bush administration allowed North Korea to develop its
nuclear weapons by refusing to engage actively with the North for the first six
years of its eight-year term, although Bush did the opposite soon after North
Korea's detonation of its first nuclear device in 2006.
Bush administration officials defended the North Korean nuclear deal as one of
its major foreign policy achievements, saying that stopped the North from
producing more weapons-grade plutonium.
Critics, however, say the nuclear deal failed to address the North's suspected
uranium-based nuclear program and alleged proliferation of nuclear technology to
Syria and other countries.
They also denounce Bush for focusing on the North's nuclear proliferation rather
than on the dismantlement of its nuclear arsenal.
In contrast to the U.S. government's official position not to recognize the north
as a nuclear power, Gates recently said North Korea has built several nuclear
bombs, and U.S. intelligence and defense reports have categorized the North as a
nuclear weapons state.
Obama has also said the North has eight nuclear weapons, although he did not
elaborate, pledging to support the six-party nuclear talks while seeking more
direct bilateral engagement.
The six-party talks hit another snag in the latest round in early last month as
North Korea would not agree on how to verify its nuclear facilities.
North Korea considers its nuclear arsenal as its only working deterrent against
an invasion. The communist state's government-sanctioned media contend Iraq was
invaded due to lack of a nuclear arsenal.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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