North Korea rocket can hit US, says CIA

NORTH Korea has an untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the western United States, intelligence officials said yesterday.

The North Korean missile has not been flight-tested, Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency said, leaving some questions about the North Korea's capability to successfully launch the missile.

CIA Director George J. Tenet, who joined Jacoby in briefing the Senate Armed Services Committee, also acknowledged the North Koreans have the capability to reach the western United States with a long-range missile.

Previous US intelligence reports have said such a missile probably could carry a nuclear weapon-sized payload across the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, the governing board of the UN's nuclear watchdog passed a resolution yesterday declaring North Korea in breach of UN safeguards and sent the issue to the UN Security Council.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation governing board said Pyongyang was in "non-compliance," a diplomatic codeword which brings the issue to the

Security Council. The Security Council has the power to take steps against North Korea, including economic sanctions. Russia and Cuba abstained from the vote. Russia has said it was opposed to heightening the issue and preferred handling the crisis through quiet diplomacy outside the United Nations.

"The resolution as drafted was passed and is going on to New York," the diplomat said, referring to the UN Security Council headquarters.

There was no immediate official comment from the IAEA. The draft resolution as circulated before the board meeting said the IAEA "calls upon the DPRK (North Korea) to remedy urgently its non-compliance with its safeguards agreement by taking all steps deemed necessary by the agency".

The term "non-compliance" is a diplomatic code word that automatically sends the issue to the Security Council.

The draft resolution also called upon North Korea to peacefully resolve the crisis through diplomatic means. The nuclear crisis erupted last October when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a programme to enrich uranium.

This is in violation of a 1994 accord, under which it froze its nuclear programme in exchange for two atomic power reactors and economic assistance. Since December, Pyongyang has expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), restarted a mothballed nuclear complex capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium and threatened to resume missile tests. A diplomat from a European member State said there was broad agreement among IAEA board members the crisis should go to the Security Council this was despite some reservations about possibly provoking North Korea.