Gates: North Korea Can Strike US in Five Years
The New York Times reports:
BEIJING — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned Tuesday that North Korea was within five years of being able to strike the continental United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile, and said that, combined with its expanding nuclear program, the country “is becoming a direct threat to the United States.”
Mr. Gates is a former director of the C.I.A., and his statement, officials said, reflected both a new assessment by American intelligence officials and his own concern that Washington had consistently underestimated the pace at which the North was developing nuclear and missile technologies.
It is unclear how recent the new assessment may be, but Mr. Gates’ remarks, made just an hour after he met with Hu Jintao, China’s president, may have been partly intended to convince China that the Obama administration no longer regards the North as a concern only in the region. The administration has increasingly put pressure on China to try to persuade North Korea, a longtime China ally, to give up its nuclear weapons program.
“The Chinese are always talking about their ‘core interests’ and threats they may have to respond to,” said one American official deeply involved in North Korea strategy. “They needed to hear that we have a few, too.”
In comments to reporters during a visit to Beijing, Mr. Gates said he was worried that within a relatively short time frame North Korea would simultaneously continue to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. That combination, he said, had increased the need for pressure on North Korea, particularly if there is another provocation on South Korea by the North like the deadly shelling of a South Korean island in November.
“We consider this a situation of real concern, and we think there is some urgency in proceeding down the track of negotiations,” Mr. Gates said.
Mr. Gates said he nonetheless expected North Korea’s ability to be limited. “I don’t think it’s an immediate threat,” he said.
But his remarks were the first to put a time frame on when the North, which has conducted two nuclear tests, including one that fizzled, might be able to launch a nuclear-capable missile that could cross the Pacific. That has been a much-debated point for more than a decade, and the subject of a lengthy study on missile threats conducted byDonald H. Rumsfeld before he became President George W. Bush’s first defense secretary.
