NORTH KOREA: North Korea is threatening to escalate the crisis over its nuclear programme by launching a second ballistic missile test, if the United States carries out its intention to push the matter before the UN Security Council.
A Security Council meeting could lead to economic or political sanctions against North Korea, a move Pyongyang says it would regard as tantamount to a war declaration.
US Under-secretary of State Mr John Bolton, who is in Seoul, said South Korean officials have agreed to take the matter before the Security Council.
"It's not a question of if it goes before the Security Council, it's only a matter of time," Mr Bolton said.
Mr Bolton said the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors could pass its third resolution on the subject and refer the matter to the Security Council this week "if we see a consensus emerging."
North Korea signalled it will carry out its threat to abandon the self-imposed moratorium it adopted in 1998 after its first medium-range missile flew over Japan. The test caused great alarm and helped persuade Tokyo to reopen talks which resulted in a visit to Pyongyang by the Prime Minister, Mr Junichiro Koizumi, last autumn.
If the Security Council begins discussions on the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, diplomatic sources said North Korea could also declare itself a nuclear state.
A nuclear reactor at the centre of the dispute will start generating electricity "within weeks", a pro-North Korean newspaper based in Japan reported.
"We are currently hurrying the process," Vice-Minister Shin Yong Sung of the North's Power and Coal Industries told Choson Shinbo, published by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan.
Experts say the North's main complex at Yongbyon could produce several nuclear weapons within months. North Korea says it is reviving the 5-megawatt reactor, which had been frozen since 1994 under a deal with the US, to generate badly-needed electricity and it has no intention of producing weapons.
A fresh crisis seems inevitable as Mr Bolton said France, Britain and most likely Russia would also support going to the UN. Earlier this week, Mr Bolton also said China voiced no opposition when he was in Beijing.
In Vienna IAEA spokesman Mr Mark Gwozdecky said "no decision has yet been taken" on whether to refer the dispute to the council, but the agency's 35-nation board of governors was monitoring the situation.
"If there isn't movement on the part of North Korea, ultimately this will have to go to the Security Council," Mr Gwozdecky said. "I think by the end of the week we will have a better lay of the land."