South Korean leader in US as North Korea tension soars

WASHINGTON: South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak on Monday started a visit to the United States to plan action on North Korea, which staged a giant rally in a defiant show of support for its nuclear drive. The US Congress approved a resolution supporting Lee against the North hours after he arrived.

Lee was due to meet late Monday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before a summit on Tuesday with President Barack Obama. Lee was expected to ask Obama for explicit security guarantees after North Korea tested a nuclear bomb, stormed out of a six-nation disarmament accord and scrapped six decades of accords with the South.

The North's ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said Monday that Lee's request was "intolerable" and said that such commitment would be "virtually formalising a provocation for nuclear war." Dennis Blair, the US intelligence chief, said on Monday that a scientific analysis concluded that North Korea "probably" carried out its second-ever nuclear test in May with a yield of "a few kilotons." The UN Security Council last week tightened sanctions against North Korea over the test, including calling for stricter inspections of cargo suspected of containing banned missile and nuclear-related items.

North Korean state media said that some 100,000 people rallied in Pyongyang against the UN Security Council resolution, blaming Washington for organising it. North Korea is ready to "deal telling blows at the vital parts of the US and wipe out all its imperialist aggressor troops no matter where they are in the world," military officer Pak Jae-Gyong was quoted as telling the rally. Lee, a conservative businessman, took office last year.

To the delight of many in Washington, he reversed a decade-long "sunshine policy" under which Seoul provided aid to the impoverished North with few conditions. In Seoul, Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek said that North Korea never intended to give up its atomic weaponry and is thought to have been developing a secret programme for seven to eight years despite taking part in talks. In its response to the UN Security Council resolution, the communist state vowed on Saturday to build more bombs and to start a new weapons programme based on uranium enrichment. Hyun told a parliamentary hearing he believes the enrichment programme - a second route to an atomic bomb after the North's admitted plutonium operation - had in fact been in existence for years.

"As the US raised the accusation in 2002, I believe (the uranium enrichment programme) had started before that. I believe it has been there for at least seven to eight years," Hyun said in answer to a question.

Several analysts and officials believe ailing leader Kim Jong-Il, 67, is intensifying military tensions to bolster his authority as he tries to put in place a succession plan involving his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un. Amid US reports that North Korea could be preparing its third nuclear test, South Korea has sent extra troops and naval units to border islands seen as a likely flashpoint.

The US House of Representatives approved a resolution demanding that North Korea end its "hostile rhetoric" against Seoul and abide by UN resolutions and the six-nation nuclear accord.