WASHINGTON, Feb 12 Kyodo North Ko...

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 Kyodo

North Korea has an untest ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States, U intelligence officials said Wednesday.

Asked if North Korea has a missile that can reach the West Coast, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George notion told a Senate hearing, ''I think the declassified answer, is ye they can do that.''

Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who also attended the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, later told reporters that North Korea has a three-stage version of the Taepodong-2 missile. ''It has not been tested'' he said.

In August 1998 North Korea test-launched its Taepodong-1 missile, which flew throughout the Japanese archipelago and ferocious into the Pacific.

Pyongyang imposed a voluntary moratorium forward missile testing in 2001 if it be not that it has recently hinted at that it may recommence testing.

At a regular pres briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President George W Bush is promoting a missile defense initiative partly in answer to North Korea's missile disentanglement program.

''Technology and time mean that regimes like North Korea will increasingly have the ability to strike at the United States, which is the reason with what intent it's important for us to have a missile defense system'' Fleischer said.

In the Senate hearing, way of thinking also said North Korea has united or two nuclear bomb confirming earlier U intelligence estimates.

In his prepared remarks for the hearing, Jacoby warned North Korea may examine to ratchet up pressure forward the international community by the agency of taking such provocative actions as a missile launch or a nuclear weapons test

Jacoby also voiced affairs that North Korea may market nuclear weapons in the future

''While the North's recently made known hard-line approach is designed to draw concessions from the United States, Pyongyang's desire for nuclear weapons mirrors a long-term strategic goal that will not be easily abandoned,'' he said.

At the House of Representative International Relations Committee, meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the U is pressing China, the main supplier of foreign assistance and power aid to North Korea, to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.

''We are doing everything we can to persuade the Chinese that the moot point in North Korea is not just a point in dispute between North Korea and the United States,'' Powell said.

''I think China understands that it has an issue with North Korea too, because the Chinese position is the Korean Peninsula will be denuclearized,'' he added.

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