Kindgo
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March 10, 2003
Korea jets tried to kidnap spyplane crew, says America
From Roland Watson in Washington
PENTAGON officials believe that North Korean fighter pilots were trying to capture the crew of an American spyplane that they intercepted last weekend.
Rather than the interception being a chance encounter in international airspace, US military officials now think that the jets had been sent on a well-planned mission to force the surveillance aircraft to land in North Korea, where its crew would have been seized.
The assessment suggests that, even after ejecting international weapons inspectors, test-firing missiles and reactivating a nuclear facility, there may be no end to the provocation that North Korea is prepared to use as it stands poised to restart its plutonium programme. Had the interception backfired, resulting in a loss of life on either side, the world would have been teetering on the brink of war on the Korean Peninsula.
If the North Koreans had succeeded in taking hostage the 15 US Air Force officers on board, just as the US was preparing for war in Iraq, Washington would have been pitched headlong into a second international crisis that it has for months been desperately trying to play down.
The Pentagon conclusion follows extensive debriefing of the US RC135S Cobra Ball crew, based at the Kadena airbase in Japan. It rests on the account of the spyplane crew, who reported that one of the North Korean pilots had made internationally recognised hand signals to the American flight deck to follow him, according to The New York Times.
Such a motive would at least provide an explanation for why four North Korean fighter jets, two MiG29s and two MiG23s, flew 150 miles out from North Korean airspace. Chronic fuel shortages mean that pilots in the North Korean Air Force fly little more than 13 hours of training a year. To see them straying so far from home is highly unusual.
There was, however, no way to confirm the inference that the North Koreans had intended to kidnap the crewmen in the latest incident, US officials conceded.
Analysts are still divided as to whether North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship is a serious attempt to build an arsenal or a cry for attention and an attempt to blackmail the US into giving economic and fuel concessions. It is not, therefore, clear how North Korea would have hoped that holding 15 Americans hostage would have helped it to further its cause.
The 22-minute incident last weekend brought back memories of an incident in 1969 in which North Korea attacked an unarmed Lockheed spyplane, killing all 31 crew.
In April 2001, a US Navy Lockheed EP3E propeller- driven surveillance aircraft, packed with high-tech eavesdropping equipment, was forced to land on Hainan Island in China after it collided with a Chinese fighter jet. The 24 crew were held by the Chinese for 11 days before being released.
The aircraft was returned, disassembled by the Chinese, three months later. American officials admitted that, despite the crews’ efforts to destroy equipment, intelligence had been lost.
There was no radio contact between the crews in the latest confrontation, but initial reports from the American cockpit that one of the North Korean jets had “locked on” to the RC135S, as a prelude to launching an attack, have been dispelled.
US officials were forced to deny reports last week that, with its focus on Iraq, the White House had resigned itself to North Korea becoming a nuclear power. Washington is refusing Pyongyang’s requests for one-on-one talks and is trying to force China and Russia, as well as Japan and South Korea, to put pressure on North Korea to step back from the brink.
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said: “I think eventually we will be talking to North Korea, but we’re not going to simply fall into what I believe is bad practice of saying the only way you can talk to us is directly, when it affects other nations in the region.”
Troubled relations
July 27, 1953: President Eisenhower signed an armistice to end the Korean War and “ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved”
January 23, 1968: The American spy ship, the USS Pueblo, was seized by the North and held with 82 US sailors for almost a year. One American sailor was killed in the attack. The vessel is now moored on the Taedong River in Pyongyang and serves as a museum
August 1969: A US EC121 surveillance aircraft was shot down by a North Korean jet, killing 31 Americans
August 18, 1976: Two US soldiers among a group of United Nations personnel attempting to trim the branches of a poplar tree in the demilitarised zone that separates North and South Korea were attacked and killed with axes
March 1993: North Korea threatened to withdraw from its Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments. After talks with the US, the decision was suspended
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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