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Clinton 'had plans to attack N. Korea reactor'
ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands -- Former U.S. President Bill Clinton says he had plans in the early 1990s to attack and destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities after the secretive communist state was found to be producing weapons-grade plutonium. At the time, he said, North Korea had plans to produce between six and eight nuclear weapons per year. "We actually drew up plans to attack North Korea and to destroy their reactors and we told them we would attack unless they ended their nuclear program," Clinton told a security forum in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam Sunday. "We were in a very intense situation," he said. His statement came days after North Korea announced that it planned to restart its nuclear reactor after Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, announced he was halting supplies of fuel oil to the country. The United States had been providing North Korea with the oil under the terms of a 1994 agreement, ending the first crisis over the North's suspected weapons program. Under the deal, known as the Agreed Framework, the North had agreed to mothball its reactor and abandon efforts to construct nuclear weapons, pending the construction of two advanced reactors that do not produce weapons-grade material. However, in October North Korean officials told a visiting U.S. delegation they had continued with their weapons program in contravention of the deal. Highest bidderLast week Pyongyang said it planned to restart its nuclear reactor to cover the energy shortfall created by the cutting of fuel supplies. Commenting on the North Korean announcement, Clinton said the move made it imperative that Pyongyang be persuaded or forced to halt its weapons program. "Make no mistake about it, it has to be ended," Clinton said. "You do not want North Korea making bombs and selling them to the highest bidder because they cannot feed themselves through the winter," he added. However, he said it was more likely North Korea would use the nuclear issue to bargain for more aid rather than put weapons on the market. The former president's comments came as ranking U.S. Republican and Democrat senators warned that the worsening standoff with North Korea could become dangerous and should not be ignored simply because of tensions with Iraq. Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat, called for stronger diplomatic efforts to overcome a recent breakdown in agreements aimed at freezing North Korea's nuclear weapons program. "I think we're in danger as a result of the Bush administration policy towards North Korea of turning a situation which is difficult into one which is quite dangerous," Lieberman said on ABC's This Week. "We cannot have a nuclear North Korea. That is a danger." 'Very dangerous'
"North Korea is very dangerous, and we cannot miscalculate, because the effects upon South Korea and the neighborhood are great," Lugar said. "And they are developing ... missilery that could reach us," he added. "I think we have to recognize that." Both senators urged renewed negotiations with Pyongyang, and said Washington should not threaten it with military action, which Lieberman said would be "unwise." "I think we're at a point now where each side ... seems to be trying to be more macho than the other," he said. "And when you do that, you can end up in a war that you didn't really mean to get into." Both agreed that postponing action on North Korea and focusing on Iraq was not a good idea. "We really have to be in negotiations; we have to be talking," Lugar said. "I think the idea that we can handle one thing at a time is clearly not the case." "I don't think we can wait," Lieberman said. "As much as I support what we're doing in Iraq, I don't think we can say, 'North Korea, forget about it until we're done with this.'" The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.
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