Washington – The sanctions demanded by U.S. officials to punish North Korea for this week’s weapons test are primarily aimed at what the Bush administration increasingly views as the greatest threat posed by North Korea: the spread of nuclear technology.
On the high seas, the Pentagon has managed to track and even interdict weapons shipments coming out of North Korea. U.S. spy planes, manned and unmanned, as well as naval ships have been able to keep close watch on cargo vessels leaving North Korean ports.
But as a result, North Korea has begun to avoid sending arms shipments by sea, government officials believe, sending cargo overland and by aircraft to the north, where they enter Chinese territory and become more difficult to follow, current and former U.S. officials said.
“Our folks pay very close attention to the vessels they are using and where they go; we stay on top of this one,” Adm. William J. Fallon, the U.S. military’s top officer in the Pacific, said last month. “One thing we can’t do anything about is the air movement, because it goes over Chinese or Russian airspace. It’s up to those countries to do things.”
The new U.N. sanctions resolution proposed by the U.S. would direct all members “to undertake and facilitate inspection of cargo to or from” North Korea. In effect, it would require China to help close the gap in American interdiction efforts.
It’s a challenge unlike any yet faced by U.S. diplomatic and military officials. Until now, nations that have developed nuclear capability have wanted to keep their newfound power to themselves and did not view their new weapons as potential export commodities, as many believe North Korea does.
Past international efforts to block exports and enforce embargos have had some limited and short-lived success, including the oil shipments coming out of Iraq during the 1990s.
But North Korea’s use of Chinese routes for conventional weapons exports raises the prospect that it may attempt to use similar means to transport nuclear technologies.
David Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector who specialized in nuclear-proliferation issues, said that, from China, the weaponry is probably flown to places such as Iran and Syria.
China has allowed North Korean shipments of missile components and has been an exporter of missile systems to rogue regimes itself.
But U.S. officials consider China less likely to tolerate North Korean nuclear shipments because that could undermine China’s status as the only nuclear power in eastern Asia.
