Rumsfeld: Reports on N. Korea 'inaccurate'
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BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared irked Monday about media reports that the United States was likely to decide in the next few weeks whether to bring North Korea to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program.
Reporters traveling with Rumsfeld on a sightseeing tour in Bangkok asked him about the reports Sunday that cited a senior defense official.
"I will answer that one question," Rumsfeld said sharply. "The president has stated what the policy is, the secretary of state has stated it, and I have stated it. And it's all exactly the same, so I think the stories that have been playing are just inaccurate and mischievous."
The senior defense official spoke to reporters over the weekend, while Rumsfeld was in Singapore meeting with Asia-Pacific defense leaders.
Taking the matter before the Security Council "is something we're giving increasing study to and probably will come to a decision over the next few weeks," the official said Sunday. (Full story)
The United States threatened in March to take North Korea to the United Nations.
The defense official said Sunday: "We have an escalating downward spiral of threats by North Korea, and it appears to be marching to its own frustration drum. It's a very good time to be talking about it [taking the country before the council], the June-July period."
Responding to those remarks while en route Sunday to an Organization of American States foreign ministers' meeting in Florida, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said "that the idea that, within weeks, we're going to decide one way or another, is forward-leaning."
Rice denied that she or President Bush has set any time limits. "[But] are we examining options? Of course," she said, adding the administration has been considering those options since her trip to Asia in March.
"We still believe there is life in the six-party talks," she said, referring to discussions involving the United States, the two Koreas, Russia, China and Japan. But she said that "the Security Council is always an option."
In 2002, the North Korean government withdrew from its nuclear agreements, kicked out U.N. inspectors and monitors, and restarted a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which had been shut since 1994.
The six-party talks have failed to reach a breakthrough in the impasse over Pyongyang's nuclear program. North Korea opted out of those talks almost a year ago, saying the United States has a hostile policy toward it.
In February, Pyongyang declared it had nuclear weapons and would continue boycotting the six-party talks indefinitely unless Washington agreed to one-on-one talks. The Bush administration has refused to do so, saying the issue affects the entire region and that other parties should be included as well.
In the past few months, both sides have traded insults, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il calling the U.S. president and his advisers "hooligans" and Bush calling Kim "a tyrant."
While in Singapore, Rumsfeld urged China to play a bigger role in getting the six-party talks back on track.
At the same time, the secretary voiced some of the harshest rhetoric yet over China's military buildup.
"It is estimated that China's is the third largest military budget in the world, and now the largest in Asia," he said. "One might be concerned that this buildup is putting the delicate military balance in the region at risk -- especially, but not only, with respect to Taiwan. Since no nation threatens China, one wonders -- why this growing investment?" (Full story)
In Thailand, Rumsfeld held brief meetings with the country's defense minister, Gen. Thammarak Isarangura Na Ayutthaya, and prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, discussing piracy in the Malacca Strait and the volatile situation in the country's Muslim-dominated south.
But he essentially played tourist on his first visit to Thailand as defense secretary -- timed as both a post-tsunami visit and a respite before meeting with NATO leaders later this week.
CNN's Elise Labott, Elaine Quijano and Aneesh Raman contributed to this report.
