TOKYO (Reuters 1.25.99)

North Korea accused the United States Saturday of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war.

``It is the final goal of the U.S. warmongers to stifle the Korean socialist system with nuclear attacks,'' said a commentary in the North Korean official party newspaper Rodong Sinmun.

The paper, monitored in Tokyo, said that unless the United States changes direction, ``an armed conflict, that is a nuclear war, is unavoidable.''

The paper said that the U.S. had made the threat to use nuclear weapons against North Korea at the 20th Military Committee Meeting with South Korea earlier this week.

Pyongyang said it is ready to meet the U.S. challenge and that it will attack the U.S. mainland if the U.S. “attempts to inflict a nuclear holocaust on the DPRK (North Korea).”

Thursday, January 21, 1999
Copyright c Las Vegas Review-Journal

Hoover Dam is one of five likely
targets of a potential Chinese or North Korean nuclear missile attack on the Western United States and needs to be protected by a sea-based, anti-missile defense system, two defense analysts said Wednesday at a gathering in Las Vegas.

"If North Korea launched a missile at Las Vegas would we be able to shoot it down? Most (Americans) would say, `of course,' " said Frank Gaffney, a former secretary of defense for international security policy.

But the right answer, he said, is that there is no system in place that could knock out incoming, nuclear-tipped missiles from China or North Korea. Those two countries could strike only targets in the Western United States because of the 5,000-mile-range limit of such missiles as the DF-31.

While Pentagon officials were announcing a $6.6 billion five-year plan Wednesday to beef up U.S. anti-missile defenses, Gaffney and political scientist Brian Kennedy, vice president of the California-based Claremont Institute think tank, called for revamping the Navy's Aegis ships at half the cost -- $3 billion over five years.

To protect the Western United States, surface-to-air missile systems aboard those cruisers need only to be equipped with new targeting software and more effective, conventional weapons that could knock down enemy missiles shortly after launches are detected. The plan calls for several tiers of defense in case the initial anti-missile launches fail.

"The United States will have a missile defense. The only question is, will it be before we need it?" Gaffney said in his presentation at the Las Vegas Country Club to members of the Nevada Policy Research Institute and the Keystone Group, a conservative Republican organization.

Kennedy said the most likely targets of a foreign missile launch on the West Coast are:

--Los Angeles, because of its population

--Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, where 25 percent of U.S. oil reserves are kept

--Hoover Dam, the most essential structure for agriculture and drinking water supplies in the Southwest

--Chemical weapons depots in Oregon and Washington, which could release deadly toxins if struck

--Port Valdez, a key location for delivery of Alaskan oil

"In the event of any conflict, these will be the key targets," Kennedy said.

He cited a Central Intelligence Agency report from last year that said China has 600 nuclear missiles, of which 18 are Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, and 13 of those are aimed at targets in the United States.

Gaffney said Americans have developed a complacent attitude while President Clinton has been in office. He blamed Clinton for lulling the American public into a false sense of confidence while restrictions from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty have precluded deploying an effective defense for most of the country.

"President Clinton did not say in this State of the Union address what he said two years ago, which is that there are no missiles pointed at our children," said Gaffney, who is the founder and director of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.

"It is not true. This was one of the most scandalous lies he has ever told," Gaffney said.

After the United States succeeded with Operation Desert Storm in an effort to subdue aggressions by Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf in the early 1990s, Gaffney said the biggest surprise to arms inspectors after they landed in Iraq "was how close Saddam was to having a full-up nuclear capability.

"Saddam was within a year of having operational nuclear weapons," he said. "Things are not necessarily the way they seem. In short, we are very much at risk with a misplaced confidence in the world in which we live," Gaffney said.