White House: US may confront ships near NKorea

[June 13, 2009]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration said Friday it is prepared to confront ships believed to be carrying contraband materials to North Korea but will not try to forcibly board them, in accordance with new U.N. sanctions.

White House officials said they expect North Korea to act "irresponsibly" to the sanctions, imposed Friday by the U.N. Security Council in response to the communist nation's recent nuclear tests. The sanctions include expanding an arms embargo and authorizing searches of ships thought to be carrying banned items to North Korea, such as materials that could be used in nuclear weapons development.

But the Obama administration has decided it will not react to whatever new action Pyongyang takes, such as another nuclear test, officials said. North Korea has said it would view new sanctions as a declaration of war. One reason the White House is signaling now it won't seek any new action is that it received approval for a tough sanctions regime from the Security Council - though lacking the ability to use force to interdict and inspect ships - and is not likely to get anything tougher anytime soon.

"We're not going to jump to their drummer," Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters at the White House. "We're going to implement this sanctions regime to the fullest possible extent."

If a ship refuses to be either boarded in international waters for inspection or diverted to a port, Rice said, U.S. officials "will take all necessary action" to publicize its ownership, what it is thought to be carrying and other information. The goal, she said, it "to shine a spotlight on it" and make it more difficult for countries to help the ship complete its journey, such as by refueling.

Rice also said the United States will "ramp up and intensify" its efforts to find out about suspect ships. She would not discuss any new deployment of U.S. military resources to do so, however.

"I'm not going to get into the disposition of our military assets," she said. "Suffice it to say that we'll take what steps are necessary, and we have the ability to do so."

A senior defense official said late Friday that the military, knowing the sanctions were being discussed, has been exploring ways to carry out such operations. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record about issues still under discussion and not approved.

Asked if additional U.S. ships would have to be deployed for the new mission, two defense officials said only that the U.S. already has significant presence in the region.

Rice also said, without specifics, that the U.S. has "other abilities to act in different realms - economic, diplomatic and the like."

But a senior White House official said the administration has decided to forgo planning for hypothetical future situations to focus its attention primarily on making sure the newly approved sanctions regime is enforced and has teeth. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe administration thinking.

Rice said she would not be surprised if North Korea reacted to the sanctions with "further provocation."

"There's reason to believe they may respond in an irresponsible fashion to this," she said. Still, Rice said she expects the sanctions to have significant impact on North Korea's financing of its weapons and missile systems and praised the participation of China and Russia.

Rice said that Iran - another nation at deep odds with the United States about a disputed nuclear program - should take a message from how the U.N. responded to North Korea's actions.

"I imagine that they have been following this closely," Rice said of Iran's leaders. She said Iran should see that "the response from the international community has been very clear, very firm and very meaningful."

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Associated Press writers Ben Feller, Pauline Jelinek and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

[Associated Press; By CHARLES BABINGTON]

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