Online Edition, Friday, May 29, 2009
ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT -- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke publicly for the first time since North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests conducted earlier this week and immediately downplayed the threat posed by the regime to the U.S. following those tests.
“I don’t believe that anybody in the administration thinks there is a crisis. What we do have, though, are two new developments that are very provocative, that are aggressive, accompanied by very aggressive rhetoric,” he said.
Gates said that he was not aware of any unusual troop movements inside of North Korea and did not see a need to reinforce the U.S. presence already there.
Additionally, he said, the U.S. ground-based missile defense capabilities along its Pacific rim can handle any current or future missile threats from Pyongyang.
“We have no intention of taking military action against North Korea unless they do something that requires it,” he said.
Instead, Gates said the tests and their timing, coinciding with a scheduled conference of regional defense ministers in Singapore, presented a chance for the U.S. to better coordinate multilateral options with its allies and China against a common threat.
“Because I think that just based on what the Chinese government has said publicly, they’re clearly pretty unhappy about the nuclear test in particular, and they weren’t very happy about the missile test either.And my impression is that they were surprised by the nuclear test,” he said.“I think there may be some opportunities here.”
At the conference, Gates will attend a first-ever trilateral meeting of defense ministers from the U.S., Japan, and Korea.
“To state the obvious, I expect that North Korea will probably be the hot topic in a lot of the bilateral meetings, as well as in the conference sessions themselves,” he said.
Gates will deliver a speech Saturday morning addressing theKorean situation and other security issues facing the countries represented at the conference, called the Shangri-La Dialogue.There are 250,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Pacific Command, according to PACOM, or one-fifth of the U.S. military strength.
“We’re all obviously negotiating and talking about what to do in response to the nuclear test as well as the missile test. And whether it’s through the six-party talks or the UN and so on, it’s important for us to stay in close contact,” he said.
But Gates also said it may be time to move beyond those talks, which he said have not produced the desired outcome.
“I think that they clearly have not had the impact in North Korea that any of us have wanted. That doesn’t mean they’re useless, by any means, and we are still committed to the six-party talks.But I think that we need to figure out a way to try and move forward with North Korea, and the question is: how can the other, how can the non-North Korean members involved work together to try and achieve the objectives of the six-party talks, which was to try to bring about the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
However, he did not advocate for bilateral U.S. talks with Pyongyang, instead of a multilateral approach.
“Personally, I think that is not the way to go.I think that we ought to continue to work through the six-party talks, but I think we need to sit down with our colleagues in the six-party talks and say, ‘Where do we go from here?’”
Whatever the way forward, Gates urged any consideration of further sanctions against North Korea should focus on the government rather than the population.
“The North Korean regime has already done enough damage to the North Korean people.\ I think we should be cautious in the way we look at reactions, in terms of doing something that would be further damaging and harmful to the North Korean people.”
“If you’re gonna think about different kinds of sanctions then it seems to be they ought to be targeted at the problem, and not at those that are being persecuted by the government.”
One area, he said, includes the export of weapons of mass destruction.
“Their export of both missile technology and nuclear technology is a real worry. These guys have shown a penchant in the past for selling anything they’ve been able to develop. So there’s a lot of behavior in the past that gives us current concern.”
This week, South Korea signed onto the Proliferation Security Initiative, a 2003 agreementsupported by nearly 100countries that calls for inspecting ships inbound to North Korea.
“This was a subject of some domestic controversy in South Korea, so I think their willingness to take this step after this step by North Korea is an important one,” said Gates.
Gates briefed reporters traveling aboard his E-4B en route to Singapore, while roughly 500 miles west-southwest of Wake Island, in the Western Pacific, according to the aircraft operations center.
The secretary’s plane, a converted Boeing 747, contains the National Airborne Operations Center, one of four such military command centers available the president, secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the only mobile one operating on full-time alert.
