US sends bombers to deter N. Korea

US bombers landed on the Pacific island of Guam to deter North Korea in the event of a US-led war with Iraq as Asian investors smarted at a report yesterday Pyongyang was preparing to launch a mid-range missile.

But there were signs of unofficial contacts between the United States and the communist North about a suspected nuclear weapons programme in a country Washington has branded part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran.

The Japanese news agency Kyodo quoted a senior US official yesterday as saying North Korea was moving ahead with preparations to launch a mid-range Rodong ballistic missile, different from the short-range missile test-fired last week just hours before South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's inauguration.

The Kyodo report hit some financial markets in Asia. "With this sort of news, investors are very uncomfortable," said a Hong Kong-based bond dealer at a European bank.

The South Korean won and main stock market both fell amid fears about security and the Bank of Korea said those fears were filtering through into the economy, although most South Koreans appear unperturbed.

A few hours after US bombers arrived in Guam, Roh met security advisers yesterday to discuss the crisis and plans for the president and his foreign minister to visit Washington.

"We do have some B-52s and B-1s on the flight line (airstrip)," Staff Sergeant Jess Harvey at Anderson Air Force Base on the Pacific island told Reuters in Tokyo by telephone.

He said they had arrived "late last night" from the continental United States but declined to specify how many.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who ordered the deployment of 24 long-range bombers, told a briefing it was a prudent move.

"I don't think there's a decision by the (US) administration to start forward deploying threatening forces against North Korea," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told reporters in Canberra.

Australia, one of the few US allies with diplomatic links with communist Pyongyang, has called for multilateral talks.

By contrast, Washington and Seoul have appeared at odds over how to tackle the North, particularly over whether to rule out the use of military force to thwart Pyongyang's nuclear plans.

China, one of Pyongyang's few allies, said direct US-North Korea talks were the answer.

"We have all along called for dialogue and opposed pressure or sanctions against North Korea. Rather than solving the problem, this can only lead to the complication of the situation," Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan told a news conference.

But one common strand has emerged - both Washington and Seoul have reached out to Pyongyang unofficially in the past two weeks despite Washington's desire for multilateral talks rather than the bilateral talks the North demands. Unofficial contacts have turned into a slow tango towards full talks before.

"It is true that National Security Adviser Ra Jong-yil met North Korean officials," Blue House spokeswoman Song Kyoung-hee told a televised briefing. "That was not an official contact and was designed to open a channel of talks with North Korea."

Ra held his talks with North Korean officials in Beijing before Roh took office. At about the same time, what US officials described as private individuals met North Korean representatives in Berlin, where the North has an embassy.

The United States and North Korea, which have no diplomatic ties, have held talks in Berlin before as well as through the United Nations in New York, the so-called "New York channel".

Both sets of talks took place before last weekend's air near-miss in which four North Korean MiG fighter jets buzzed a US spy plane in international airspace off the peninsula.

That incident - a whisker away from disaster in one of the world's most militarised regions - followed repeated reports from the North that RC-135 reconnaissance planes had flown espionage sorties inside North Korean airspace.

North Korea has yet to comment on that incident, although its main newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, published a wedge-driving editorial urging all Koreans to confront the United States.

"The US is keen to bring the disaster of a nuclear war to all the Koreans in the north and the south," the paper said.

North Korea, which is beset with grim food and energy shortages amid its standoff with Washington, also announced it would convene its annual parliament session on March 26. Defence spending and a follow-up to damp-squib economic reforms seem set to top the agenda. Tackling Washington will also loom large.

Rumsfeld said US President George W. Bush preferred to use diplomacy with the help of South Korea, Japan, China and Russia to settle the nuclear crisis.

At the same time, White House officials denied the Bush administration was resigning itself to a nuclear North Korea amid fears Pyongyang will begin reprocessing materials that could be used to make nuclear bombs.

As the White House planned for war with Iraq, US Democrats criticised the administration for its tactics in dealing with what they said was the far graver threat posed by North Korea.

Samuel Berger, national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said Bush risked reversing 30 years of policy.