WASHINGTON: The coalition of foreign-policy hawks that promoted the 2003 invasion of Iraq is pressing President George W. Bush to adopt a more coercive policy toward North Korea, despite strong opposition from China and South Korea.

By most accounts, North Korea ranked high in bilateral talks between Bush and Northeast Asian leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, at the summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Santiago, Chile this past weekend, although the final communiqué did not address the issue.

Bush reportedly tried to make clear that his patience toward Pyongyang and its alleged efforts to stall the ongoing "Six-Party Talks" was fast running out and that Washington will soon push for stronger measures against North Korea in the absence of progress toward an agreement under which Pyongyang will dismantle its alleged nuclear-arms programme.

Bush claimed on Sunday that his interlocutors, who included the leaders of the four other parties - Russia, China, Japan and South Korea - agreed with him, but Hu and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun have not backed down publicly from their strong opposition to a harder line toward Pyongyang.

Indeed, just before the weekend summit, Roh told an audience in Los Angeles that a hardline policy over North Korea's nuclear weapons would have "grave repercussions", adding, "There is no alternative left in dealing with this issue except dialogue".

That the hawks back in Washington are indeed mobilising became clear on Monday when William Kristol, an influential neo-conservative who also chairs the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), faxed a statement entitled 'Toward Regime Change in North Korea' to reporters and various "opinion leaders" in the capital.

PNAC, which boasts Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney's powerful chief of staff, I Lewis Libby - among a dozen other senior Bush national-security officials - as signers of its 1997 charter, issues statements relatively infrequently.

"It's clear that they see the transition (between the Bush administration's two terms) and before any new round of the Six-Party Talks - as the time to try to set policy direction", one veteran analyst told IPS on Monday.

Kristol's statement referred in particular to two recent articles, including one published last week by Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which appeared in the neo-conservative 'The Weekly Standard', which is edited by Kristol.

The article, 'Tear Down This Tyranny', called for the implementation of a six-point strategy aimed at ousting North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Il, in part by "working around the pro-appeasement crowd in the South Korean government", which apparently includes Roh himself.

The second article, published Sunday in the 'New York Times', detailed a number of recent indications cited by right-wing officials and the press in Japan - including high-level defections and the reported circulation of anti-government pamphlets - that Kim's hold on power may be slipping.

The article noted in particular a recent statement by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Shinzo Abe, that "regime change" was a distinct possibility and that "we need to start simulations of what we should do at that time".

"Recent reports suggest the presence of emerging cracks in the Stalinist power structure of North Korea, and even the emergence of serious dissident activity there", wrote Kristol.

"This should remind us that one of President Bush's top priorities in his second term will have to be dealing with this wretch(ed) regime", he went on, citing Eberstadt's strategy as "useful guidance for an improved North Korean policy". -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.