US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz urged North Korea to reverse its nuclear weapons drive and promised a ”devastating” response to aggression on the Korean peninsula.
Wolfowitz said bankrupt North Korea should stop the ”enormous diversion of its limited resources” to its military and instead concentrate on the welfare of its famished people.
”If it chooses to go down that road it will find us willing to respond in a positive way.”
Wolfowitz indicated that if the Stalinist state took a different path, then Washington would be prepared to respond.
”Our response to aggression will be united, immediate, and devastatingly effective,” the deputy defence secretary said.
Wolfowitz, who was to leave for Japan later on Monday after a one-night stay in Seoul, was addressing a luncheon hosted by South Korean businessmen and later spoke at a press conference.
After meeting with top South Korean defence officials including Defence Minister Cho Young-Kil in the morning, Wolfowitz said that a controversial plan to realign US troops based in South Korea
would be implemented next year.
The realignment will include the 2nd Infantry Division, some 15 000 troops based close to the heavily fortified border with North Korea, he said.
”We want to align our forces, including the 2nd Infantry Division, so that they can be effective from the beginning,” he said.
South Korean authorities have opposed any redeployment of the division to the south of Seoul, which would take it out of range of a North Korea missile and rocket attack.
The US deputy defence chief said North Korea’s claims of having developed nuclear weapons must be taken seriously.
”Certainly what we know suggests that we should take what they are saying very seriously,” he told the press conference.
Washington believes that North Korea may possess one or two nuclear weapons, but Wolfowitz said US intelligence ”is not perfect”.
”The fact that we can’t give a definitive answer underscores the fact that what we really need here is a verifiable end to whatever nuclear program that they do have,” he said. – Sapa-AFP