TOKYO: North Korea is stepping up its nuclear weapons crisis with the United States in an effort to force Washington to negotiate at a time it believes officials there are distracted by the prospect of war with Iraq, analysts and officials in the region increasingly believe.

The rising drumbeat of war threats coming from North Korea, and its fast-paced moves to restart facilities to produce nuclear weapons fuel, are attempts to exert leverage on the United States, the analysts said.

Some officials in Japan worry that North Korea will continue to increase the stakes — to the point of testing any nuclear weapon it may already have — to bring the Bush administration to the bargaining table. “There’s only a few things left that North Korea can do. And each of them is very serious,” said a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official.

North Korean officials believe Washington is delaying action until after an Iraqi war, analysts here said, and are anxiously trying to short-circuit that strategy.

North Korean leader “Kim Jong Il is trying to make this a chicken race with George Bush,” said Pyon Jin Il, editor of the Korea Report, an analysis of Korean issues published in Japan.

“North Korea wants this issue solved before the Iraqi issue is over,” Pyon said. “They assume the United States will not be able to attack two countries, so they are saying, ‘If you want to go to war with Iraq, you have to settle with us.”’

North Korea is eager to use that leverage because “when the Iraqi issue is finished, North Korea thinks the United States will attack them next,” Pyon said.

The Bush administration is trying to avoid escalation, avoiding the term “crisis” and pushing the matter toward the UN Security Council. That would allow other countries to get involved, and perhaps delay the matter beyond the widely expected military action in Iraq.

But “it would be naive to think that for a month North Korea will do nothing,” said Masao Okonogi, a Korean specialist at Keio University. “ ... They want to accelerate the situation. They want a conclusion early.”—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.