WASHINGTON - North Korea is far along in its preparations for testing a long-range ballistic missile but the United States would not necessarily use its missile defense system to shoot it down, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
After a week in which unidentified American officials had stoked alarm about activities at a missile site in eastern North Korea, the U.S. government appeared ready to ease tensions somewhat.
White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said it remained uncertain if North Korea actually planned to test-fire the Taepodong-2 missile, an act Washington has warned would be seen as provocative.
"We're watching it very carefully and preparations are very far along. So you could, from a capability standpoint, have a launch. Now what they intend to do ... of course we don't know. What we hope they will do is give it up and not launch," he told reporters traveling with President George W. Bush in Vienna, Austria.
Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN that North Korea's missile capabilities were "fairly rudimentary."
"But we are watching it with interest and following it very closely," Cheney said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declined to say whether he believed a North Korean missile launch to be imminent, and acknowledged, "We don't know their procedures perfectly."
"All the intelligence suggests they have been making preparations for a launch of a missile from the area of Taepodong for some days now," Rumsfeld said.
Missile Defense
Rumsfeld said it would depend on the circumstances whether Bush would order the use of the developing U.S. missile defense system to try to shoot down any North Korean missile launch.
"The president would make a decision with respect to the nature of the launch, whether it was threatening to the territory of the United States or not, and the likely threat that it would pose," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing.
The U.S. military said it conducted a successful test of a sea-based component of the system off the coast of Hawaii, but called the timing a coincidence.
The test -- involving an interceptor missile fired from the USS Shiloh, a Navy Aegis-class cruiser -- was part of the system aimed at short- to medium-range ballistic missile threats and not to long-range missiles like the Taepodong-2.
The United States has built up a complex of interceptor missiles, advanced radar stations and data relays designed to detect and shoot down an enemy missile, but tests have had mixed results. The multibillion-dollar system is based on the concept of using one missile to shoot down another before it can reach its target.
"What we have is a developmental initial system that does not have all the pieces in place but has some modest initial capability. And it will be some months before all of the pieces are in place," Rumsfeld added.
U.S. officials have said they do not know what kind of payload the North Korean missile might carry. But two officials told Reuters they would view it as "somewhat less provocative" -- although still undesirable -- if the missile were used to try to put a satellite in orbit.
William Perry, former President Bill Clinton's secretary of defense, and Ashton Carter, an assistant secretary of defense under Clinton, argued in a commentary in The Washington Post the United States should state its intention to destroy the Taepodong-2 before it can be fired if the North Koreans persist in their launch preparations.
Peter Rodman, assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, rejected the idea in testimony before the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, saying, "A pre-emptive strike is a little more dramatic than I would expect would happen.
"Our policy is to deal with this in a less drastic way at the present time. We have a missile defense capability and North Korea was very much on our mind when we designed that capability," he added.
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