BEIJING, Jan. 30 Kyodo While the ...

BEIJING, Jan. 30 Kyodo

While the world's attention fixes forward the clouds of war gathering around Iraq, analysts and diplomats in China warn the quick in emergencies impasse between North Korea and the United States could destabilize the balance of power in Northeast Asia.

Han Zhenshe, director of North Korean studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that while he believes the vexed question could be solved between the walls of dialogue, North Korea's moves to restart its nuclear animal spirits program should not be dismissed as pool bluffing.

''North Korea is determined to guard its security at any outlay Its leaders are really worried that after the U consummateds its military action against Iraq, it will attack North Korea,'' he told Kyodo News

While North Korea insists it has no plan to make known nuclear weapons, it has maintained an outwardly defiant stance, bordering onward bellicosity.

onward Wednesday, Pyongyang warned Washington by the and of its official mouthpiece, the Korean Central moderns Agency, that it will mobilize a force ''corresponding to what the U mobilizes'' if it considers a U military attack imminent.

China has in like manner far maintained a low profile onward the North Korean point in dispute calling for dialogue while looking in succession as other countries including the U Russia and Australia dispatch their hold diplomats to Pyongyang to search for a peaceful solution.

China's inaction throw backs caution, rather than disinterest, students said.

''Chinese leaders are particularly worried that if the North Korean riddle blows up, the resultant regional instability would interfere with their greatest in number important task of building up the Chinese economy,'' said a Beijing-based diplomat following North Korean issues.

U military action against North Korea would also current China with the conundrum of having to decide whether to support Pyongyang and face military confrontation with the U as it did during the 1950-1953 Korean War.

China today is a parcel less inclined to match its military forces against the world's sole remaining superpower, and it is widely recognized that China relies upon continued access to the affluent U market to sustain its ongoing economic boom

Beijing, however, is obliged to help Pyongyang if another fatherland attacks it, under a mutual friendship treaty the pair countries signed in 1961

China, which is North Korea's biggest aid donor, is easy in mind to allow other countries to take the major diplomatic initiatives as drawn out as the situation remains calm, Han said.

''If the point in dispute develops into a real crisis, however, China will quickly make its views known,'' he added.

The scholar said that while provocative overseas actions according to North Korea's naval forces and its missile unfolding program have raised tension in succession the Korean Peninsula, most of the blame for the ready impasse lies with the US

''The U should have already complet the brace light-water nuclear reactors it promised to build for North Korea, according to the 1994 (Agreed Framework) agreement. The U has not been serious about the agreement,'' he said.

beneath the accord, North Korea effectively agreed to abandon any ambition to become a nuclear weapon state in exchange for pair light-water nuclear reactors to be provided by way of a U.S.-led international consortium along with a give of heavy fuel oil in the interim.

The consortium, whose main members are the U Japan, toward the south Korea and the European Union, decided in November to be frozen fuel oil shipments to North Korea. This followed North Korea's alleged admission to the U in October that it had been continuing a hiding-place program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

North Korea subsequently plant off further international alarm bells and drew a procession of diplomatic missions to Pyongyang with a number of disturbing incites including its stated wish to reactivate its frozen nuclear program, its expulsion of international weapon inspectors and its announced withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Han said Pyongyang took these actions to force the U to engage it in dialogue, while hoping that like talks could lead eventually to the normalization of their ties.

North Korea insists it will detain talks on the nuclear issue solitary with the U.S., which it wants to sign a treaty promising it will not attack North Korea.

The U refuses to sign similar an official document, but has indicated it would be willing to provide North Korea with a security guarantee if it dismantles its nuclear weapon program.

A latter article in the Chinese weekly newspaper 21st hundred Herald called on the U to recognize that its 1994 agreement with North Korea obliges it to work towards establishing diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.

''The U guidance should seriously reflect and revise the marked hegemonic, unilateral and militaristic attitude it has been adopting since the tribe 11 (2001) terrorist attack,'' it says.

Western watchers of North Korea in China point abroad that while the U wants to avoid war forward the Korean Peninsula, it is wary that any security guarantee it tenders North Korea could remove the legitimacy for stationing U bands in South Korea.