The Australian Prime Minister has said "The leaders of North Korea are facing a fateful choice. They can continue the tentative steps they have made towards constructive engagement with the world, towards a peaceful solution on a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons, and towards a brighter future for its people. Or they can choose the perilous path of confrontation and nuclear blackmail, sustaining their impoverished state through trafficking drugs and weapons, and further deepening their isolation."

It is an evil world. North Korea is a regime that is comprehensively an anachronism has paradoxically become an inescapable portent of a bloody future. North Korea poses a threat. The CIA believe that North Korea is developing the ability to miniaturise its nuclear weapons so it could put them on missiles. Previously, it was thought that North Korea possessed at most three crude nuclear devices, which were too big and clumsy to be put on missiles. If these were ever to be used, they would need to be dropped from aeroplanes. If the North Koreans developed the technology to put nuclear weapons on missiles, they would be able to threaten all of Japan with nuclear devastation. The CIA also believes the North Koreans have developed a site at Youngdoktong for testing explosives that would detonate the miniaturised devices. While the North Koreans are working on ballistic missiles that could reach the US and northern Australia, they already have missiles that can reliably reach Japan. Meanwhile, they possess, in 8000 spent nuclear fuel rods, enough plutonium for another half-dozen nuclear weapons. They have restarted the reactor at Yongbyon, which will also provide new weapons grade plutonium, and they have a uranium enrichment program, which will also produce weapons material, using small centrifuges that are hard to detect. North Korea has captured a single essential truth about the future, that governing regimes will be more secure, no matter how monstrous they are in other respects, if they possess nuclear weapons.

What can we possibly do? What are the alternatives? The US and its allies really only have three basic options on North Korea.
ƒ{ The first is the traditional one ¡V reward Pyongyang for its nuclear delinquency, bribe it into abandoning its nuclear ambitions. It is still the preferred option of every policy maker in Washington and Canberra. The problem is North Korea took the bribes but kept building the weapons anyway.
ƒ{ The second choice is a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. The Pentagon has examined and re-examined this very seriously. The problem is Pyongyang's power of retaliation, which resides not so much in its nuclear weapons, but in its artillery. This is nestled into the hills just north of the border with South Korea. War on the Korean Peninsula would be catastrophic.
ƒ{ The third policy choice for the US and its allies in the end is to do nothing: to huff and puff diplomatically but simply learn to live with a nuclear North Korea.
This is the most likely outcome. Ponder what it really means. No one can know for sure how much nuclear capacity Pyongyang really has. As well as its reactor at Yongbyon, and the 8000 spent fuel rods with all their plutonium, it also has a uranium enrichment program. And, of course, it is developing ever-longer range missiles. So much destructive capacity in such a dangerous and at times mad regime is profoundly disturbing in its own right, but much worse is the implication for proliferation. North Korea makes $US1 billion to $2 billion ($1.5 billion to $3 billion) a year smuggling missiles, weapons of mass destruction technology and drugs. This is its main source of hard currency.

Eventually, if it is producing a lot of plutonium, Pyongyang will sell some of it. There is not an intelligence analyst in the world who does not believe Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and, with its extensive nuclear power industry, is already far advanced towards their production. Libya and Syria are almost inevitable customers. Though it is mere common sense to try to interdict North Korean shipments of WMD materials, plutonium could be easily transferred in planes. Proliferation will be impossible to stop.

If North Korea survives this testing period and becomes an established nuclear weapons state the pressure on Japan and South Korea to follow suit would be overwhelming. Eventually, over perhaps a decade or two, the world will be transformed into one in which most big states have nuclear weapons. Trying to prevent leakage of weapons to terrorists then would be Sisyphean.

Outside factors might save us in North Korea. The regime might collapse. China might prevail on Pyongyang not to go all the way in nuclear matters. But China's interests are not quite ours. It does not want Japan and South Korea to go nuclear in reaction to Pyongyang doing so, but this could be achieved either by getting North Korea to give up its nuclear program or simply by recreating a Clintonian fudge, with Pyongyang taking the bribes but keeping its program going clandestinely.

North Korea said on Thursday that it would regard any US move to seek UN sanctions against the communist country as "the green light to a war".

The warning came after South and North Korea agreed to try to peacefully resolve the nuclear crisis, though Pyongyang has said further talks with the United States are useless unless it drops its demand that the North first scrap suspected atomic weapons programs.

North Korea says abandoning such programs would leave it defenceless and has in the past said sanctions would be seen as a step toward war.

Pyongyang "will take self-defensive measures, regarding it as the green light to a war" if Washington seeks a UN resolution authorising economic sanctions against it, North Korea said in a statement on KCNA, its official news agency.

South Korea's Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan declined to answer a reporter's question yesterday as to whether the South would support sanctions. He described the issue as a "very delicate and very sensitive".

An unnamed spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying by KCNA that recent US aggression compels North Korea "to opt for possessing a necessary deterrent force and put it into practice".

The agreement between the two Koreas pledging to resolve the dispute peacefully was made after four days of talks in Pyongyang. But was unlikely to mark a change in attitude by North Korea. The communist state agreed to similar communiques at previous Cabinet- level talks.

The North has insisted that the South should not meddle in the nuclear standoff, calling it a dispute with the United States.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States was reviewing an offer by North Korea to give up its missiles and nuclear facilities in exchange for substantial US economic benefits.

The North Koreans floated the proposal in talks with US envoys in Beijing last week. According to a senior US official, North Korea said for the first time during that meeting that it had nuclear weapons and was contemplating exporting them, depending on US actions.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao questioned whether North Korea made such an assertion. He said that as far as he knew, they have "not made such a statement".

He added that China, which also participated in the Beijing talks, supports the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula but wants North Korea's "legitimate security concerns" to be addressed.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder today urged the United States to exercise restraint in dealing with North Korea, joining Japan in calling for a diplomatic solution.

"We cannot use the same method as in the case of Iraq," Schroeder said after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

North Korea has demanded a nonaggression treaty with the United States. The US administration has ruled out such a move, but says some form of written security guarantee could be possible.

Mr Powell called the Beijing meeting "quite useful", but later told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that North Korea's proposal was "not going to take us in a direction we need to go".

On Wednesday, North Korea said nuclear talks would be a waste of time if the United States insists that the communist country first scrap its suspected atomic weapons programs before discussing possible economic and diplomatic benefits.

Regarding North Korea the situation becomes more irretrievable. They have an army of people analysing the situation and the possible consequences, economic and social, such action would cause. There is no real basis for such a decision as you have written. I do not believe it will bring any radical change in the situation. The question is, what are the possible repercussions of direct action? Have they any idea of what they are dealing with? Are the North Koreans actually capable of self defence that poses a threat to many or is it simply a ruse? It is only the start of a larger and increasing problem and it will not go away no matter what is done in an attempt to eradicate it. You cannot continually control it through pressure. You cannot continually bomb or starve those into submission. You can only deal with it by looking at the cause behind it. You cannot continually exterminate a cause, an ideal, a hope, a dream. Not unless you begin to eliminate those who are responsible and to do that you will have to eliminate hundreds, thousands if not millions of people. Are we prepared to wrest it from others and are we prepared to die to do so? Surely, in a free world, each country has a just and rightful claim to such weapons? What gives us the right to say "you cannot have a weapon" and are we so sure that we would not use such a weapon if our survival depended upon it and then rationalise its use?

Regarding the point you raised, North Korea sees it as an injustice and looks upon it as persecution and a systematic attempt to destroy North Korea. They operate from their own doctrines and such ideas engender an unjustified optimism which fails to foresee their own weaknesses. Their inflexible conviction of their own superiority prevents them from seeing the basic facts that they could lose any offensive. The loss of contact with reality can affect the very life and death of a nation and at times overshadows anything we can try to do or pre-empt. The North Koreans may have lost touch with reality and their arrogance can distort their view of the situation to an unreal one and could lead to many harmful decisions. What makes it fatal is their rigidity, their inability to change, to adapt to reality. Such rigidity keeps reality from moderating the excesses of feeling which can reign unstinted. Such blind over estimation of their own strength and their perception of others could lead them to collide with reality and the effect could be damaging and disastrous. The views I express are not necessarily my own views. You asked me to look at the situation from the viewpoint of the North Koreans and this I have attempted to do.

The U.S. has had a steadfast commitment to South Korea’s security and well-being; building and maintaining security arrangements that assure the stability of this volatile region, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them poses a significant challenge to the ability of the United States.

North Korea has aggressively sought to increase its nuclear technology and missile capabilitiy which in itself constitutes a pressing threat to regional stability. Not only has North Korea been committed to acquiring nuclear weapons either through indigenous development or by covertly acquiring enough fissile material to produce them but they may have also initiated biological and chemical warfare programs. It is now possible that North Korea may have developed up to three or four nuclear weapons as well as a biological and chemical capabilty.

(Why has North Korea made the announcement now? How did they, an extremely poor regime get the funds for the development of this programme? Is it possible that they have sold/exchanged fissible material to other regimes? And if so, has this material made its way to the Middle East? Barring Iraq, is it now possible that Syria and Iran are further forward in their nuclear programmes than we believe? Are these thoughts dark and intricate imaginings of an apprehensive mind?)

In the short term, the threat of conventional war against the South remains and in the long term, the entire security of the Far East is at risk if North Korea has obtained a nuclear capability because other nations in the region such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc., will look towards their own nuclear deterrence capability which will directly impinge on the security in the region.

The North Korean's have consistently portrayed the American's as being evil and they themselves as being brave patriots. They are emotional and manipulative. They play on anti-American sentiments and propagate these sentiments successfully. Such words are taken as being the truth by the North Korean population. Internally, they are winning this propaganda war. If sanctions are instituted against North Korea because of their nuclear, chemical and biological programmes (and this may be entirely dependent on the Chinese attitude) we can expect to hear some inflammatory speeches. Will such sanctions provide an adequate safeguard against renewed North Korean aggression or will it force North Korea's hand?

There have been some unusual exchanges of rhetoric between the US and North Korea in recent years. America's last approach resulted in a brush-off and North Korea's dislike of America's insistence has been so pointed and undisguised that I begin to wonder if anything can be achieved. It is a moment of delicate balance. This is not a situation that you can solve without risk. Certainly, there will be considerable risk if North Korea has achieved nuclear capability. I’ve suspected North Korea of duplicity on a number of occasions and have been suspect that they have they been playing America along until they developed their capability.

I've gone over the details and weighed the pros and cons and the risk and chances. The situation South Korea faces remains difficult. The very hope of survival in South Korea rests on the assumption that South Korea will not be alone in the event of an outbreak of hostilities since behind South Korea stands the immense military power of the US. All their most exhaustive contingency planning has been done on that basis. North Korea knows all this. The US knows that North Korea will not risk throwing everything at South Korea. North Korea knows that the US will not hesitate to come to South Korea's aid. It is barely credible that North Korea will risk their own annihilation.

If North Korea suspects some impending action then this may tilt the balance and they could throw everything at South Korea. The Americans would only need to strike once against North Korea to annihilate North Korea entirely. A North Korean strike against South Korea would probably be mortal to North Korea. It would be similar to a string of a bee which dies through its own stinging such a situation may sound far-fetched but it coulod now become more of a possibility and fallout would affect the South East Asian region.