US considers sending jets to Korea

The US is considering whether to send fighter jet escorts with reconnaissance planes near North Korea after jets from the country intercepted a surveillance flight and shadowed it for 20 minutes, Pentagon officials said.

Also yesterday, a White House spokesman said the US plans a formal protest of North Korea’s “reckless actions” in sending MiG fighters close to one of its RC-135S surveillance planes on Sunday.

The Pentagon also is sending more military forces to north east Asia “as a prudent gesture to bolster our defence posture and as a deterrent,” said Defence Department spokesman Lieutenant Commander Jeff Davis.

Other Pentagon officials said the deployment, which includes sending B-52 bombers to the US Pacific territory of Guam, had been ordered on Friday, well before Sunday’s incident.

“These (U.S.) moves are not aggressive in nature,” Lt Cmdr Davis said.

Military officials said yesterday that the US was reviewing its options in light of the gravity of the incident, one of the most dangerous military provocations in a stand-off over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

Those options could include having US fighters escort similar flights, a senior military official said.

The US has not suspended the flights and does not plan to, officials said.

The Pentagon has been hesitant in the past to arm or escort any such surveillance flights, which military officials say always operate legally – well inside international airspace.

Escorting the surveillance flights, some officials argue, would undercut the US assertion that the flights are not military threats.

During Sunday’s incident over the Sea of Japan, four North Korean fighters came as close as 50ft to the US Air Force plane, which was flying 150 miles off the Korean coast.

The North Korean fighters illuminated the unarmed US plane with targeting radar, Lt Cmdr Davis said.

The North Korean fighters were carrying heat-seeking missiles that did not require radar locks to hit their targets, a military official said yesterday.

That means the MiGs could have fired on the slower US plane without further warning.

The North Koreans shot down a US Navy EC-121 surveillance plane in 1969, killing all 31 crew.

At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer said President George W Bush would consult with allies to determine the best way to protest the incident.

Mr Fleischer said the President believes the North Korean stand-off can be solved through diplomacy.

“North Korea continues to engage in provocative and now reckless actions,” he said. “And North Korea engages in these actions as a way of saying, ‘Pay me’. That will not happen.”

Tensions began to rise in October, when the US said North Korea admitted having a programme to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

Since then, the US has refused direct talks with Pyongyang and cut off fuel oil shipments under a 1994 agreement that banned North Korean nuclear weapons development.

The US believes North Korea has one or two nuclear bombs.