US Ups The Ante On North Korea

US President George W. Bush's administration is urging nations from China to the former Soviet states to deny overflight rights to aircraft from North Korea that the United States says are carrying weapons technology. Citing two senior administration officials, the newspaper said that at the same time, the administration is accelerating an effort to place radiation detectors at land crossings and at airports throughout Central Asia. The devices are intended to monitor the North Koreans and the risk that nuclear weapons material could be removed from facilities in the former Soviet states. The new campaign was speeded up this summer after a previously undisclosed incident in June, when American satellites tracked an Iranian cargo plane landing in North Korea. The two countries have a history of missile trade -- Iran's Shahab missile is a derivative of a North Korean design -- and intelligence officials initially suspected the plane was picking up missile parts. The paper said that rather than watch silently, senior Bush administration officials began urging nations in the area to deny the plane the right to fly over their territory. China and at least one Central Asian nation cooperated, according to senior officials. The officials said they believed the Iranian plane left without its cargo, but they were not sure. Nonetheless, the new effort underscored the efforts the administration is undertaking to curb the North's exports of missile parts, drugs and counterfeit currency that are widely believed to be its main source of revenue and the way it finances its nuclear program. In interviews, the officials insisted that the more aggressive tactics would enhance the effort by the US to continue negotiations over disarming North Korea, which have lasted for two years and resulted last month in a statement of broad principles to disarm, but no agreement about when or how, the paper pointed out.