Seoul welcomes Security Council soft line on Pyongyang nuclear

Seoul welcomes Security Council soft line on Pyongyang nuclear standoff

SEOUL (AFP): South Korea yesterday welcomed a UN Security Council statement reflecting the soft Chinese line on the North Korean nuclear standoff, as Washington said it was beefing up its defense posture in the South.

"We support the actions and decision of the Security Council 100 percent," South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung-joo at the UN in New York.

In Seoul, where tension over the possibility of war has been palpable, the foreign ministry called the statement "an appropriate measure" and urged the North to recognize the "concerns and will of the international community."

Analysts here saw the South Korean reaction as moulded by worries of a second Korean war and by President Kim Young-sam's talks with the Chinese leadership in Beijing this week.

At the talks the Chinese, the most trusted ally of the unpredictable and isolated regime in Pyongyang, warned against imposing threats or deadlines while saying they would back international condemnation of North Korea's nuclear program only if it was couched without threats.

The non-binding Security Council statement -- as opposed to the binding resolution with threats of sanctions, for which Britain, France and the United States had fought unsuccessfully -- urges North Korea to give international inspectors full access to its suspect nuclear sites.

But it imposes no deadline and carries no direct or indirect threat of sanctions.

The welcome of the 'Chinese statement' was repeated in Tokyo -- which is within range of North Korean missiles -- and by the White House, which said it was "very pleased with the language" and the fact that China had come forward on the issue.

However a U.S. official told reporters privately that the United States would have preferred a binding resolution.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Takemura said in Tokyo the statement underlined "what the international community wants North Korea to do through dialog."

But though a crisis over the drawn-out, year-long impasse seemed to have been averted yet again, hard-hitting statements by U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, and a wrangle between Washington and Pyongyang over talks or inspections first, both kept tension levels high.

Perry, quoted Thursday before the Security Council call was issued, said the U.S. would stop Pyongyang from building a nuclear arsenal even if it meant going to war.

North Korea, for its part, insisted that a solution to the impasse could be found only through normalization talks with the United States.

Perry told the Washington Post that while war was not imminent, the Pentagon was readying additional air crews and ground troops for South Korea, where some 36,000 U.S. troops are in "trip wire" positions just south of the demilitarized zone.

The U.S. planned no preemptive action, Perry said, but he feared that possible UN sanctions -- which the North has said it would consider a declaration of war -- might require the deployment of additional troops.

The risk of provoking the North, he said, was one he would rather face than the risk of catastrophe two or three years from now should the North build its arsenal into a regional threat.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe North Korea has developed at least one nuclear weapons which Pyongyang denies.