North Korea poses possible ballistic missile threat to US

WASHINGTON -- North Korea has an untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the western United States, intelligence officials said Wednesday.\nThe North Korean missile is a three-stage version of the Taepo Dong 2, said Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.\nIt has not been flight-tested, Jacoby said, leaving some questions about North Korea's capability to successfully launch the missile.\nCIA Director George J. Tenet, who joined Jacoby in briefing the Senate Armed Services Committee, also acknowledged that North Koreans have the capability to reach the western United States with a long-range missile.\nPrevious U.S. intelligence reports have said such a missile probably could carry a nuclear weapon-sized payload across the Pacific Ocean.\nWhite House spokesman Ari Fleischer said he was unfamiliar with the testimony but said: "Technology and time means regimes like North Korea will increasingly have the ability to strike at the United States."\nHe said that is why President Bush supports building an anti-missile shield.\n"We do have concerns ... about North Korea's missile development programs," Fleischer told reporters.\nThe revelation was certain to raise questions about Bush's priorities -- and whether North Korea or Iraq pose a greater threat to the United States. Baghdad does not possess weapons that can strike America, officials have said.\n"They are both important priorities," Fleischer said. "The question is, what are the means best used to deal with each priority."\nHe said diplomacy has failed to curb Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program for more than a decade, thus Bush made military action a front-and-center option. "That's not the case with North Korea," Fleischer said, saying Bush believes diplomatic pressure can contain North Korea.\nTenet said North Korea probably has one or two nuclear weapons.\nAn unclassified U.S. intelligence estimate, released by CIA officials in December 2001, said the three-stage Taepo Dong 2 missile was probably close to being ready for flight testing.\nBut North Korea has held to a voluntary moratorium on flight tests of its long-range missiles, although officials in Pyongyang likely will conduct new tests.\nThe 2001 U.S. government report said a three-stage Taepo Dong could deliver a several-hundred-pound payload from North Korea to targets about 9,300 miles distant -- sufficient to strike all of North America.\nA two-stage Taepo Dong 2, which would be easier to use successfully, may be able to reach Alaska or Hawaii, it said.\nIn 1998, the North Koreans attempted to put a satellite into orbit with the launch of a three-stage version of the earlier model of the Taepo Dong. It failed when the third stage did not ignite.\nSecretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before the House International Relations Committee, said the United States is pressing China to use its leverage with North Korea to persuade it to end its nuclear program. China is the main supplier of foreign assistance and energy aid to North Korea.\n"We are doing everything we can to persuade the Chinese that the problem in North Korea is not just a problem between North Korea and the United States. It is between North Korea and the region and North Korea and the world," he said.