UNITED NATIONS: Caught in the middle of a new political showdown between the United States and North Korea over weapons of mass destruction, the United Nations appears unable or unwilling to react.

“If the UN Security Council could have acted so quickly on a potential military threat from Iraq, there is no reason why it should not get engaged in the new North Korean crisis,” a Third World diplomat said on Friday.

But he expressed doubts about an immediate Security Council role in North Korea “because the United States would not want to divert the Council’s attention from Baghdad to Pyongyang”.

There is no indication that the Council will call a formal meeting to discuss the emerging crisis in North Korea, a UN spokesperson said.

In November, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to send arms inspectors back into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction after enormous pressure from the United States.

North Korea openly defied the United States this week by not only declaring its intention to revive its long dormant nuclear weapons programme but also threatening to expel the two UN arms inspectors who have been monitoring its nuclear facilities.

Mohamed El Baradei, director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has publicly criticised North Korea — a full-fledged member of the United Nations since September 1991 — over its decision to resume its nuclear programme at its re-processing facility in Nyongbyong.

“Moving towards restarting its nuclear facilities without appropriate safeguards, and towards producing plutonium, raises serious non-proliferation concerns and is tantamount to nuclear brinkmanship,” El Baradei said on Thursday.

The IAEA head described as “worrying” a decision by North Korea to open the sealed doors of a nuclear reactor that was shut down in 1994 as part of an agreement with the United States.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has already warned the North Koreans against taking advantage of US pre-occupation with Iraq to resume its nuclear weapons programme.

On Monday, Rumsfeld said the United States was militarily capable of fighting and winning two wars simultaneously — one against Baghdad and the other against Pyongyang.

While inspectors have found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the administration of President George W. Bush says that the country’s recent incomplete declaration of its weapons programmes could be considered a ‘material breach’ of the UN resolution and justify military action against the country.

North Korea said that it was re-starting its nuclear reactor for badly needed electricity following a decision by the United States and other Western nations to cut off oil shipments.

The cut-off was prompted by reports that the country had been secretly making efforts to continue its nuclear weapons programme in violation of its 1994 agreement with the United States.

El Baradei said that the re-processing facility in Nyongbyong is “irrelevant” to North Korea’s ability to produce electricity. North Korea, he said, has “no current legitimate peaceful use of plutonium, given the status of its nuclear fuel cycle”.

According to IAEA, North Korea has cut seals and impeded UN surveillance equipment at a total of three facilities at Nyongbyong.

El Baradei said that the IAEA is expected to issue a new report on recent developments in North Korea at a meeting of the agency’s board of governors in the first week of January.

An IAEA draft report says that recent unilateral actions by North Korea have rendered the Agency “unable to verify, pursuant to its safeguards agreement with the country, that there has been no diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

Senator Joe Biden, the outgoing chairman of the US Senate foreign relations committee has warned that the North Korean crisis “is a greater danger immediately to US interests at this very moment, in my view, than (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein”.

“If they lift the seals on these canisters, they’re going to be able to build four to five additional nuclear weapons within months if they begin that re-processing operation,” he added.

Unlike its stand against Iraq, the United States has refused to threaten North Korea with military action because of a possible retaliation by Pyongyang against two close US allies in the neighbourhood: South Korea and Japan.

The United States also has about 37,000 soldiers in South Korean soil who would be vulnerable to a North Korean attack.

Senator Richard Lugar, the incoming chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, cautioned against any pre-emptive military strikes on North Korea. Any such attack, he said, could provoke a “devastating counter-attack” on Seoul.

“My greatest concern here is nuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula, and ultimately Japan, all of which is a bad idea for the United States and the world,” he added.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.