North Korea's nuclear plea for attention

The North Koreans says it wants to open up

By Matt Frei BBC Washington Correspondent

The North Koreans have decided to reactivate a nuclear power programme as a desperate plea for attention from the United States, which is currently preoccupied with Iraq.

The North Koreans see China as a model for their future

Two years ago, North and South Korea met for the first time in a half-century in Pyongyang in a ground-breaking summit.

Since then, the North Koreans have been pursuing a programme of greater openness.

But the Bush administration reversed the Clinton-era policy of engagement with North Korea, pushing North Korea to up the ante.

Making the US take notice

The North Koreans see China as a model for their future - a regime that is politically controlled, a dictatorship of the party but at the same time a nation of greater economic openness.

In order to achieve this, they need money, international engagement and aid.

At the time when President Bill Clinton was in power, this was all looking very rosy because Mr Clinton was prepared to talk to the North Koreans.

At the moment North Korea sells mostly weapons

His secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, even visited North Korea in 2000. She was the first US secretary of state ever to visit the closed communist nation.

But the Bush administration has played a completely different ballgame.

It has labelled North Korea as part of the "Axis of Evil", and broken off negotiations with North Korea.

And more recently last month's bombshell, the North Koreans revealed that they had been secretly enriching uranium to develop a nuclear bomb.

After that, the Americans cut off all aid, especially the fuel, cut off all talks and have now been playing hard ball with the North Koreans.

The United States has decided that it cannot possibly take on North Korea militarily at the moment

Now, playing the nuclear card yet again, it is the North Koreans hitting back at the Americans trying to rattle them and saying: "Listen. We're still here. We're still a threat. You've got to take us seriously."

This is not going to wash with the administration.

They have said that they will not submit to blackmail - and that is probably going to be the policy, seeing they are trying to play hard ball with virtually every other potential enemy in the world.

At the same time, North Korea is a very important issue. It is unfinished business in a very sensitive and volatile part of the world.

Force not an option

It puts administration officials in a huge dilemma.

But thus far the administration's response has been muted and quiet because they cannot do anything but use words and negotiations.

There is no military option with North Korea.

Why? The North Koreans are too powerful. They have a million men under arms.

Kim's Korea is part of America's "axis of evil"

And the heavily militarised border between the two Koreas is literally within artillery range of the South Korean capital of Seoul, a city of 14 million people.

There are 37,000 American troops based very close to that border.

Militarily, if the Americans were to push this to the brink of war - as it almost did in 1994 - that would be catastrophic.

It would lead to the death of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, mainly Koreans but also American troops.

Japan is close by, and we know that North Korea has missiles that can reach Japan.

It would destabilise the whole region. It is the most dangerous flashpoint in the whole world.

The United States has decided that it cannot possibly take on North Korea militarily at the moment. The crisis must be handled diplomatically.

The one silver lining in this cloud is that the North Koreans - despite all this rhetoric and despite playing the nuclear card - do want to open the gates of their hermit state.