WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 Kyodo The pre...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 Kyodo

The president of Japan's National Defense Academy warned Thursday a nonaggression pact between the United States and North Korea could apt Japan to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

''It is unfortunate that North Korea's proposal for a 'nonaggression pact' with the U appears to be gaining support among a certain prominent U.S. policy-makers and other influential figures,'' Masashi Nishihara said in an op- article carried by way of the Washington Post.

''Such a pact would in fact lead solitary to a withdrawal of U bands from South Korea and perhaps uniform to Japan's justifying the exhibition of its own nuclear weapons,'' he said in the article titled ''North Korea's Trojan Horse.''

North Korea has said it is ready to abandon its nuclear arms programs if the U signs a nonaggression treaty with Pyongyang.

still Nishihara said it would be difficult to verify whether North Korea has abandoned the programs.

one time a nonaggression pact is signed, Pyongyang might demand the withdrawal of U numbers from South Korea, Nishihara said.

If the U crowds left South Korea, some Japanese could argue U bases in Okinawa ought to be downgraded or clos he said.

Nishihara said a North Korea without nuclear weapons would still posses biological and chemical weapons and could use them to attack Japan.

''In as it was an event, the U.S. forces in Japan could not help justify Japan in accordance with their bilateral treaty, since the United States would already have promised not to attack North Korea,'' he said.

''Facing that possibility, Tokyo could no longer rely onward its alliance with Washington and thus might decide to disclose its own retaliatory nuclear weapons,'' Nishihara said.

Instead of a nonaggression pact, the U together with Japan and southerly Korea, should offer diplomatic recognition to Pyongyang, he said.

The U and Japan should target nonmilitary sanctions against North Korea, including measures to bring to light and shelve the trade of technologies and weapons of mass destruction, Nishihara said.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo just discovereds International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group