Perry: U.S. might use force on DPRK
The Yomiuri Shimbun

Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry warned Saturday that the United States might be forced to take military action against North Korea if China and South Korea do not agree to apply "coercive action" in urging North Korea to scrap its nuclear ambitions.

At an emergency international symposium, titled "North Korean Nuclear Test and Security in East Asia," hosted by The Yomiuri Shimbun with moderator Hajime Izumi, a professor at the University of Shizuoka, Perry and three other panelists from Japan, China and South Korea expressed pessimistic views on the outcome of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programs, which are expected to resume later this year.

Perry said if China and South Korea "did not the provide the coercion" by threatening to cut off their supply of food and oil to North Korea in the event it completed a large nuclear reactor, the United States "might take the only meaningful coercive action available to it--destroying the reactor before it could come on line."

Zhang Liangui, a professor at the Chinese Communist Party Central Party School, said the six-party talks should stick to their original purpose of achieving a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without giving tacit consent to North Korea being a nuclear state. Zhang also said that if China stops food and oil supplies to North Korea, Pyongyang would be seriously shaken, a scenario that China does not want to see.

Former South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung Joo said the United States should show "patience" and resolve the issue with "a balanced use of the carrot-and-stick approach."

Referring to a view that Japan should have a certain level of offense capabilities to work with the United States, former Defense Agency chief Fukushiro Nukaga said the nation "could take up for discussion plans to establish more advanced joint operation systems with the United States, including the Self-Defense Forces' possession of offense capabilities such as Tomahawk missiles."

He indicated he favored the nation exercising its right to collective self-defense. "I wonder if it is permissible that the United States would intercept a [North Korean] Rodong missile heading to Japan with an Aegis-equipped cruiser, but Japan would do nothing and not use its Aegis ships to intercept a Taepodong-2 missile launched toward the United States," he said.