PARIS, June 15: French strategic planners say they’re attempting to counter suggestions presently being made by Washington to Moscow, that Russian forces take part in a US-led “preventive” strike on nuclear facilities in North Korea, a French intelligence source said on Sunday.

The attack idea is being put forth “discreetly” by Washington as a way of preventing North Korea from either giving itself nuclear weapons, or, if it already has them, to destroy the weapons, as well as that country’s capacity to produce more.

Israel, which destroyed a French-built nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, is also expected to play a role in the coalition that the US defence department would like to assemble, to eliminate the nuclear potential of North Korea.

The plan, says French intelligence, is being tossed around by US defence department adviser Richard Perle, a member of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board, the advisory panel which played a quintessential role in persuading Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush of the need to attack Iraq

Mr Perle is telling Russia, as well as South Korea and China, that it is in their best interest to become part of a new coalition that would see to it that any such capacity would be nipped in the bud.