By Reuben Staines, Park Song-wu
Staff Reporters

The United States stressed over the weekend that it has no intention of launching a military strike against North Korea, despite reports that it plans to deploy bunker-buster missiles on the Korean peninsula next year.

James Kelly, U.S. assistant secretary of state, reiterated that Washington wants a gradual ``transformation’’ of the communist regime and will not use force to remove leader Kim Jong-il from power.

This message was conveyed to Pyongyang during an informal meeting between North Korean and U.S. nuclear negotiators in New York late last month, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun quoted Kelly as saying.

The term regime ``transformation,’’ rather than regime ``change,’’ has been adopted by U.S. officials over the past month in an apparent bid to calm the North’s security fears and draw it back to the six-party talks on the nuclear standoff.

Colin Powell, outgoing secretary of state, echoed Kelly’s statement, saying Washington remains committed to a peaceful resolution to the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. He believed Pyongyang will eventually realize dismantlement is ``in their best interest.’’

``The North Koreans are, of course, suspicious and constantly accusing us of having hostile intent,’’ Powell said in an interview with the Associated Press. ``We have no hostile intent.’’

However, the reassurances threaten to be undercut by claims that the U.S. is preparing to deploy bunker-busters to South Korea capable of destroying suspected underground facilities for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the North.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a U.S.-based nonpartisan think tank, claimed the small, earth-penetrating nuclear weapons will be deployed next year in a report released Friday.

The report, titled ``The Road to Nuclear Security,’’ described the plan as unfortunate and predicted it ``will only make (nuclear dismantlement) negotiations more difficult.’’

The CAP also criticized the U.S.’ hard-line nuclear posture and national security strategy for encouraging the covert development and proliferation of WMD, saying that when leaders of other nations are threatened with the possibility of preemptive strikes they perceive that their only means of deterrence is to develop a nuclear arsenal of their own.

``A case in point is North Korea: when confronted by U.S. hostility, North Korea has accelerated _ not curtailed _ its efforts to develop nuclear weapons,’’ said the report, written by Lawrence Korb and Peter Ogden, with the help of Robert McNamara, former U.S. secretary of defense.

In a sign of growing U.S. impatience over the stalled nuclear talks, a senior official in Washington hinted Friday that it may consider holding another round of negotiations without North Korea.

``I would say that we would consider looking at a five-party discussion if the current situation continues for much longer’’ he told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The official said President George W. Bush’s second-term foreign policy team will reassess the nuclear standoff and seek to put more pressure on Pyongyang if it does not cooperate.

``Coming into the New Year and second Bush term, it would only be reasonable _ given the failure, or the fact that we’ve stalled out on the talks _ to do a fundamental reappraisal of where we are in the process,’’ he said.

im@koreatimes.co.kr

rjs@koreatimes.co.kr